Time to put the squeeze on airlines
Decreases in seat size and legroom are raising health and safety issues in the U.S.
Do you have the right to room on a plane?
If you answered “no,” you’re probably with the majority of American travellers.
Recent efforts by consumer advocates are turning conventional wisdom about space on its head. Their initiatives have started an important debate about whether air travellers have a basic right to room on a plane, no matter where they sit. If these consumer groups win, it could trigger a tectonic shift that might improve air travel for everyone.
Why are we having this discussion now, more than six decades after the start of the jet age? Because seat space is shrinking at a troubling rate. The average economy-class seat pitch, a rough measure of legroom, has plummeted from 35 inches (89 centimetres) before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches (78 cm) today. And the average width of a coach class seat has contracted from 18 inches (45 cm) to about 16½ inches (42 cm).
The changes have benefited airlines, but passengers are feeling the pinch — literally — and now U.S. consumer advocates are launching a co-ordinated effort to defend your right to room.
Two consumer organizations, Travelers United (disclosure: I am the group’s co-founder) and FlyersRights, have staged a co-ordinated effort to change U.S. government policy on airline seats. FlyersRights has petitioned the federal government to create a regulation mandating minimum seat width and seat pitch for commercial airlines. And Travelers United, representing consumers on a government advisory committee, has lobbied to address the amount of space allotted to air travellers.
Paul Hudson, FlyersRights’ president, said decreases in seat size have raised not only comfort concerns, but also safety and health issues. Emergency evacuation plans aren’t adequately tested on aircraft with reduced seat configurations, and travellers face other health risks, such as deep vein thrombosis, also called “economy-class syndrome,” he says.
Reducing seat size further, he notes, “would only expand the issue and cause greater health, safety and comfort concerns.”
The Department of Transportation (DOT) hasn’t formally responded to the petition.
The consumer representative on the DOT’s Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection has pushed the U.S. government to take action. Charles Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, says he persuaded the committee to recommend testing smaller seats for safety. But efforts to persuade the panel to take a stand on seat size were blocked by the committee’s airline representative.
Airlines view the committee’s failure to recommend seat standards as vindication of their position — that government should not regulate, but instead allow market forces to set seat size.
Hudson, of FlyersRights, sees parallels between today’s discussion and one a century ago.
When there were no effective regulations on trans-Atlantic transportation, he says, steerage passengers were packed in under egregious conditions, “and their fares subsidized first-class passengers as well as fattening shipping company profits,” he says.
But it’s the safety argument that will win this debate. Hudson hopes government regulators will act before a disaster forces them to. He’s worried seats on some of the discount carriers are wedged so closely together it would be impossible to evacuate the aircraft safely during an emergency.
When the Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage without enough lifeboats, the dynamic was much the same as it is today. It took more than 1,500 deaths to persuade regulators to improve safety practices, including better ship design and adding enough lifeboats.
“Even today,” he adds, “laissezfaire fanatics and most airlines are against all regulation.”
But the tide is slowly turning, as it has for so many other human rights issues over time, in favour of sensible and compassionate regulation that protects the lives of passengers. There’s evidence even airlines understand regulation is inevitable. Advocates say they’ve signalled an openness to address some of the health and safety concerns they’ve raised.
Critics will warn the cost of a plane ticket will rise and government interference will stifle competition. But do you really want to be flying in an ever-shrinking, unsafe and unhealthy space that doesn’t respect your human dignity? Elliott, National Geographic Traveler’s reader advocate and author of How to Be the World’s Smartest Traveler (National Geographic), maintains a consumer advocate website at elliott.org.