The unfriendly skies

[10secondsurvey]

Globaliser : quote "BA Y pitch is generally still 31", which is fine for this 5' 11½" person"

Good for you. Congratulations.

Any body who says they think the space in economy is perfectly fine etc...etc and so on has got to be from that airline (or else they are a bit soft). I have seen all this type of silly argumentation before, and its not really worth wasting effort on, it really is just tosh.


How do we price it? its unfair! how could it be possible? and so on. The reality is that regulations already govern most of the aspects of airline design and operation. It really would not be very difficult to do this.

Just a point, it isn't really your height that determines your required legroom, it is the length of your femurs, although height also plays a part. the point is some tallish people have short thighs and vice versa.

For the record, seat pitch on BA IS shrinking, as detailed on their own website - whether you think it is or not, and its pot luck whether its 30" or 31"

Just as a pointer some charter airlines use 30"

[Globaliser]

bekolblockage: Can anybody do the sums and tell us how many rows of seats they would have to chuck out of an A340 or B747 to give us an extra,say, 3".

About every tenth row, if the current cofiguration is 31". So in the BA high yield 747, two rows (20 seats) of economy; and 3 rows (30 seats) in the low yield config.

10secondsurvey: Any body who says they think the space in economy is perfectly fine etc...etc and so on has got to be from that airline (or else they are a bit soft). I have seen all this type of silly argumentation before, and its not really worth wasting effort on, it really is just tosh.

Thank you for imposing a 10% ticket price increase on me that I neither want nor need. Am I soft in the head to prefer not to pay 10% more for extra space that I'd neither notice nor value?

How do we price it? its unfair! how could it be possible? and so on. The reality is that regulations already govern most of the aspects of airline design and operation. It really would not be very difficult to do this.

So no answers, then?

For the record, seat pitch on BA IS shrinking, as detailed on their own website - whether you think it is or not, and its pot luck whether its 30" or 31"

It's not pot luck; I believe I know why it's now there when it wasn't before, and if you'd like I'm happy to share my tips on how to avoid the 30" section.

[10secondsurvey]

Globaliser

Should we then assume that you would not mind flying with a 26" seat pitch because according to you that would make your flight around 30% cheaper. Do you really honestly believe those cost savings would be passed on to you??? If so, you are extremely naive.

In terms of BA seat pitch (although a similar scenario is being seen with other airlines), the point is not so much whether you can avoid the 30" seats (I thought you wouldn't mind?), it is more the fact that someone will have to sit on them - and like I said many charter operators offer a similar seat pitch. on long haul, most actually offer a better seat pitch, for example 34" on firstchoice airlines long haul. In the USA, Jet blue offer 34" pitch - and they are a so called budget airline. US Airways offer 34" pitch long haul in economy from the UK. Many other airlines in the USA offer a minimum of 32", so BA is drifting far off the mark (despite what marketing hype may say)


You sarcastically suggest "no answers then?", but I have already stated what I believe. I guess judging by the way you are jumping to the outright defence of BA, that there is much more to your connections with aviation than you let on.

Please Show me just one shred of real (not pseudo- theoretical nonsense worked out on the back of a fag packet) evidence that your seat on BA is 10% cheaper because the seats are two inches closer together. It is not such a simple calculation that you imply. Or is it just that you believe everything BA tells you?

The reality is that reducing seat pitch is a means whereby airlines maximise profits, it does not reduce the fare YOU pay. If you really believe it does reduce fares, then more fool you.

Whilst 31" is fine for you, to many people it is extremely uncomfortable, and they have not got the money to upgrade as far as premium economy or business, all they want is 2-3 inches back. That is the point being made.

Stop believing all the hype.

[Globaliser]

10secondsurvey: Please Show me just one shred of real (not pseudo- theoretical nonsense worked out on the back of a fag packet) evidence that your seat on BA is 10% cheaper because the seats are two inches closer together. It is not such a simple calculation that you imply.

It surely is not. But it is equally surely the case that if you increase seat pitch by 10%, do not raise fares, and sell the same mix, your trip revenue will fall by 10%.

For a real life example, I have but six words: American Airlines, More Room Throughout Coach.

I am also afraid that Sherlock Holmes has caught me out. I have to confess to not only being a regular piece of back-of-the-bus SLF, but also a regular BA-flying piece of back-of-the-bus SLF. And, in addition, to the very formal connection of owning a couple of hundred shares in BA so that I can get the shareholders 10% discount when I buy tickets directly from BA.

At any rate, I have the choice. You're welcome to fly FCA if you wish. But I am happy with where BA is. If they moved to 29" or 27" or 26", I would cease to be and I would take my money elsewhere. But you would impose 34" on me and the necessary extra costs. I would prefer to keep a choice about what I do.

[Rollingthunder]

Dont't see any mention of that extra room on the AA website anymore. Gone with the wind?

Funny how things often come down to a matter of a few inches.

I'm a little large, but on last flight sat next to a small chinese-american lass who was very pleasant. Gave her a couple of Bendick's Bittermints. Beleive it or not she was travelling from SFO to FRA via YVR, LHR and CPN. Best her travel agent could get her apparently. Sitting on the gate at YVR there was, two gates away a LH 747 about to leave for FRA.

[Globaliser]

Rollingthunder: Don't see any mention of that extra room on the AA website anymore. Gone with the wind?

Precisely so. Because fares would have had to have risen to pay for it. They didn't, so the concept became uneconomic and they had to remove it.

As good a real life demonstration as you could wish of the proposition that if you take out 10% of the seats, per pax revenue will have to rise by 10% just to keep revenue the same - which broadly translates into an average fare rise of 10%.

[10secondsurvey]

Globaliser, I understand that 30"-31" is fine for you - got that message. But this thread is not just about you (surprised?). It isn't just about BA either.

A lot of people do find it extremely uncomfortable in economy nowadays. As I said before, if the seat pitch is ok for you, well, congratulations. It isn't ok for a lot of other people, and that's the problem.

Having a few hundred shares (for whatever reason) in the airline you defend so forcefully, is a few hundred good reasons to doubt your credibility in this matter.

[Globaliser]

10secondsurvey: But this thread is not just about you (surprised?). It isn't just about BA either.

A lot of people do find it extremely uncomfortable in economy nowadays. As I said before, if the seat pitch is ok for you, well, congratulations. It isn't ok for a lot of other people, and that's the problem.

Having a few hundred shares (for whatever reason) in the airline you defend so forcefully, is a few hundred good reasons to doubt your credibility in this matter.

The point remains: There are choices. The market shows that given the choice between smaller spaces and higher prices, people tend to go for the smaller spaces and bitch afterwards.

I don't have an issue with you finding it uncomfortable in 31". I know there are plenty of people who do. But please exercise your freedom to choose, and let me do likewise.

I take it, BTW, that you obviously haven't been following BA's share price performance over the last few years? Not the sort of stuff that is likely to skew one's views. However, if you can bear BA's pitch, I highly recommend the additional 10% discount off virtually any flight you book that comes with a purchase of 200 shares for a very modest outlay. Or it might make it more palatable if you find that you do have to fly BA.

No, I have other reasons to like BA. I am infinitely more a customer of the airline than an investor in the airline, and that is where they have inculcated my positive opinions.

It is quite entertaining, though, to be accused of a want of integrity through my share ownership when I volunteered information that you would never have known otherwise.

[delta-golf]

I fly for business in the front, and personal trips down the back (wife and three kids). Often there is no intermediate choice which makes the relative difference so stark.

BA have actually delivered a useable solution with premium economy, as have Virgin, but neither have gone as far as it would appear EVA did a number of years ago (don't know if they do it now), when I flew on a 744 with no less than five different class configurations on it at different price levels.

A quick logical question on the room aspect. On many long haul flights, a ticket may be 500 pounds in economy, 3000 pounds in business and 5000 pounds in first. And yet neither the business pax or first pax is using 6 and 10 times the space and weight of an economy pax respectively.

My feeling is that with economy so difficult to live with for frequent travellers, rather than once in a lifetime holidaymakers, that those travellers will pay a "premium" for anything else which makes the travel bearable, and the airlines can generate better revenue return by square metre of floor space and kilo of weight
carried. The spin off from this is that economy pax are actually subsidised by premium pax.

If you don't believe this, check air fares from the early 1980's. London to Sydney, for example, was often more expensive in pounds then than it is now (so taking inflation in to account, at least twice as expensive if not more so, then than today). This was probably because the premium classes were little better than todays premium economy and did not command much higher prices than economy, ergo no subsidy.

It could be argued that if airlines used smaller aircraft and concentrated on premium classes, with a smaller, enhanced and more expensive economy section, they would in actual fact be more cost effective. Premium would not subsidise economy (better bottom line margins), economy would pull its own weight (actually generate margins rather than just covering fuel/ANC etc) and generate greater income per seat, operational and overhead costs would reduce with lower pax numbers per unit of revenue etc etc.

This would however mean that granny would be less likely to visit the grand kids in Melbourne, and that stag nights would once again be a little closer to home. Airlines would be run as profit centres and not mass transit systems, so joe average would loose out in global mobility. Global tourism would take a hit of course, but perhaps carbon emmissions would be down and less flag carriers would be in bankruptcy.

It may be a scenario where less could be more !

[Globaliser]

delta-golf: A quick logical question on the room aspect. On many long haul flights, a ticket may be 500 pounds in economy, 3000 pounds in business and 5000 pounds in first. And yet neither the business pax or first pax is using 6 and 10 times the space and weight of an economy pax respectively.

My feeling is that with economy so difficult to live with for frequent travellers, rather than once in a lifetime holidaymakers, that those travellers will pay a "premium" for anything else which makes the travel bearable, and the airlines can generate better revenue return by square metre of floor space and kilo of weight
carried. The spin off from this is that economy pax are actually subsidised by premium pax.
...
It could be argued that if airlines used smaller aircraft and concentrated on premium classes, with a smaller, enhanced and more expensive economy section, they would in actual fact be more cost effective. Premium would not subsidise economy (better bottom line margins), economy would pull its own weight (actually generate margins rather than just covering fuel/ANC etc) and generate greater income per seat, operational and overhead costs would reduce with lower pax numbers per unit of revenue etc etc.

On a pure space basis, it's quite easy to see the amount of space used by a J seat if you look at an airline that has different configurations in the same aircraft. Take BA's two 744 configurations. Between doors 2 and 4, one has 36 W seats and 134 Y; the other has 32 J, 30 W and 40 Y. One W seat = about 1.5 Y seats (Y->W is about 22% increase in pitch, and 25% increase in width abreast). So 32 J = 103 Y seats, or 3.2 Y for every J.

The fare calculations aren't necessarily so easy. While the typical retail J fare may be 6 times the typical retail Y fare, many J pax are likely to be travelling on corporate deals which can easily reach and exceed 50% of the retail fare. A greater proportion of the Y cabin is likely to be travelling on their own money, paying a retail fare.

So in a sense, the J pax are "subsidising" the Y pax - and it must be so if J is more profitable than Y (which it is). But the Y pax have their function; in paying a goodly chunk of the costs of the operation, the airline can offer a higher frequency than if it had an all-premium operation and therefore make itself more attractive both to the premium pax and to the more discerning or picky Y pax. So the whole aircraft is really symbiotic.

The argument which you advance for smaller, better and more expensive Y cabins and more concentration on premium is great, but only up to a point. BA tried this and found that it didn't really work, so have gone back to regarding true Y as a real part of their market. A lot of true Y pax simply can't/won't pay the extra for better facilities in this enhanced Y, which is really indistinguishable from W. (Indeed, it seems that this is why W is the small size that it is, despite the fact that per square metre it's the most profitable cabin on BA.) If you lose all the true Y pax, you'd have to cut frequency, and you become more vulnerable to the business cycle in premium travel. So it seems that you can't really do it completely except on very special routes.

Tightropes such as these are what, for me, makes the industry such a fascinating one to watch from the outside.

[patdavies]

As good a real life demonstration as you could wish of the proposition that if you take out 10% of the seats, per pax revenue will have to rise by 10% just to keep revenue the same - which broadly translates into an average fare rise of 10%.

Too simplistic.

If you take out 10% of the seats, you reduce the number of pax and also the weight of their baggage. This weight will be replaced by extremely lucrative cargo.

If you don't have the cargo, then less fuel is needed, thus reducing the weight still further.

My understanding is that Y pax provide the cost to run the flight and J pax are the major profit source - hence all the time and money spent on ground extras (lounges, check-in, etc) to attract and keep them

[Hotel Mode]

Not true, very few flights are weight limited, more space limited, the only extra cargo would be what could be squeezed into the space freed up by 10% fewer pax bags, ie barely anything.

[Hunter58]

Lucrative cargo?

Certainly not on the North-Atlantic, and on many other destinations that are popular with passengers the cargo yield is on the very low side. Check how many cargo carriers fly freighters beween London and JFK and it will give you a hint of how 'profitable' cargo is on such a high frequency route.


Some people suggested a legislation for minimum seat pitch. Well, you may be surprised, there were regulations around for quite some time. Remember that the tourist (nowadays called economy) class did not exisst until the first jets appeared on the horizon, and the pitch of that class was limited to a minimum of 34 inches (except charter airlines). Only after hard public outcry did this change to the now (actually regulated) minimum 28 inches on a so-called high density pitch seat.