Shape up before you fly Jetstar
Fri "Australian Financial Review"
Shape up before you fly Jetstar
December 12th, 2003
Qantas's launch of its low-cost carrier may mean more cheap seats on some routes, but passengers will need to be in pretty good shape before they get on board.
Jetstar is being touted by Qantas as the lowest-cost airline in Australia and one of the ways it's going to achieve that goal is by squishing more people on every plane.
The Airbus A320s Jetstar plans to use are being reconfigured using ``slim-line'' seats which are narrower and even more upright that Australian travellers are used to.
The 30-inch (76.2 centimetres) seat pitch the space from the back of a seat to the back of the one behind it is less that the average seat pitch of 32 inches (81.3cm) found on Qantas and Virgin Blue aircraft.
This tricky bit of engineering means Jetstar will cram 177 seats on aircraft that normally take about 150 seats.
That is pretty rough going, even by other budget airlines' standards.
Earlier this month, US carrier JetBlue proudly announced it had taken out a row of seats from each aircraft to give its passengers an extra two inches of legroom. Apparently JetBlue made the changes after complaints from passengers.
JetBlue is now offering 34 inches of seat pitch on just over half its seats, with the rest of its seats pitched at the Australian standard of 32 inches. To do that, it has reduced the number of seats on the plane from 162 to 156.
But for Jetstar, getting more people on each flight is part of the strategy to lower costs to a level at which it can compete with Virgin Blue.
The 30-inch seat pitch that Jetstar is aiming for has been used with some success on European low-cost airlines.
Budget carrier easyJet has its passengers sitting ever closer together. A 29-inch seat pitch is standard on its aircraft.
But Australia's flying public have become used to more room than what is about to be offered.
And statistics seem to indicate the size of the average Australian is following the US trend rather than the European one.
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