Journal wowbagger's Journal: Either airlines are stupid, or they are crafty... 4
First, read
this story.
It's about an airline seat called the "SkyRider", which is designed to cram a passenger into only 23 inches, being demonstrated at an airline industry conference.
There's this wonderful quote in the article:
The airline industry had nearly recovered from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when the recession hit in 2007, dramatically cutting demand, particularly among business travelers who began flying less, booking economy-class seats and staying in cheaper hotels.
Hmm. The recession could be the cause, or perhaps the cause is that most people don't find flying enjoyable, and that in many cases flying isn't any faster than driving? I was talking with a co-worker from another facility, who was in Wichita for a meeting. He had to fly back to Columbus, OH, and it would take him 10 hours to do so. Look at this map.
Google is pretty conservative about its time estimates, and THEY have it being 14 hours to drive. Now, you might argue that, given 14 hours driving vs. 4 hours flying and a 6 hour layover, flying would be preferable. But consider how much bull you have to put up with flying. Consider that driving, you can stop in KC for BBQ, stop in St. Louis at the Arch, and that you WON'T have your trip canceled mid-way because of weather.
Now the suppliers for the airlines are suggesting I make the whole trip damn near standing, crammed in like a sardine. And they wonder why people don't want to fly.
So, either:
1) the suppliers are stupid, the airlines are not stupid, and this will go nowhere.
2) The suppliers are stupid, the airlines are stupid, they will adopt this, and then wonder why their brand-new "densified" planes are empty.
3) The airlines are smart, and are getting this sort of thing shown so they can say "See, we *care* about you, and we didn't adopt this, because we know you have a choice, and we want you to want to fly with us."
I just don't know which is true.
The problem is in the lay over (Score:1)
The ideal would be to have flying be like any other form of mass transit, you want to fly somewhere you walk into an airport and hop on the next outbound plane to wherever you want to go. For domestic flights this would work great.
If you could do that, e.g. minimal to no delay, hop on and go, then putting up something like those seats wouldn't be such an issue. Hope on, 90 minutes later you are wherever you want to be, hop off. Not a big deal.
But people still "fear" flying, so we have all these ridiculas
Re: (Score:2)
What's really stupid is that flying is FAR safer than driving, yet few are afraid to drive. I think they should dissolve Homeland Security and put the money into guard rails and other highway safety measures.
Here's a picture... (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed if these were implemented I would just stop flying (unless I could opt for an airline with real seats) as I simply can't fit my long femurs into that little space, even at that angle. In order for the seat position to be correct for me to fit my legs into those seats, they would have to be height-adjustable - and adjusted to a height where I would have to lean forward to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling - especially in the shorter planes (embraerjet, canadair, dehaviland dash) that I have been flying on lately.
As for the airlines being cunning enough to threaten us with these - I wouldn't count on it. The stupid shit that has come out of our beloved airlines lately has suggested they would be just as well managed by goats.
Re: (Score:2)
The link had a picture for me at work - but maybe your machine is more locked down than that.
I'm in the same boat: make the seat fit me and you'd need a sunroof on the plane.
"An' don' be dissing de goats man!" - goats could do better than the current morons running most airlines. In many ways, the deregulation of air travel prices was the worst thing to happen to the airlines IMHO: rather than being forced to compete on features as prices were fixed, they started competing on price - and thus began the race