Leg of the journey
LONG-LEGGED fliers may be particularly interested in a side-by-side comparison of airlines that offer the most and least amount of legroom, after the world's largest airline revealed that flying economy class will become an even tighter squeeze.
American Airlines will be reducing legroom by as much as 5.08cm for passengers travelling economy aboard their Boeing 737 MAX jetliners, which are due to enter service later this year. The jets will fly primarily domestic routes.
Seat pitch -- the distance between seats – will shrink from 0.78m to 0.74m on three rows of the aircraft, and down to 0.76m in the rest of the economy class cabin, reported CNN Money.
The move is aimed at squeezing more seats into the aircraft's economy cabin, and it puts it on-par with low-cost carriers like Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines, where seat pitch averages 0.71m.
Earlier this year, American Airlines launched a no-frills basic economy fare as a way to compete with the low-cost competition.
Meanwhile, aside from choosing a seat in the emergency exit row and bulkhead, for extra legroom Cheapflights also recommends arriving early and being polite to the gate agents who may be able to reassign long-legged passengers in the event of last-minute cancellations and no-shows.
Here's a look at the average legroom space for short-haul economy class flights aboard one of the most common aircrafts, the Boeing 737, for different airlines, according to Seatguru:
KLM – 0.76m Lufthansa – 0.76m Qantas – 0.76m
United Airlines – 0.76m-0.79m Delta Air Lines – 0.76m-0.79m American Airlines – 0.79m Alaska Airlines – 0.79m-0.81m WestJet – 0.79m-0.84m Korean Air – 0.79m-0.84m All Nippon Airways – 0.81m — AFP Relaxnews