Airline Seats Are Not Shrinking. Just The Opposite. But Legroom…

There has been a lot of coverage regarding declining airline customer service.

Not much is positive.

There are issues of refund problems, of flight delays, cancellations, long waits for telephone assistance, and lots of consumer angst. In some ways, airlines are selling product without sufficient product support. Several state attorneys general have called upon the Department of Transportation to act.

One of the criticisms routinely made is that airlines have been reducing the width of seats, allowing them to cram more passengers into airplane cabins.

One major network has reported that in the last five years, average seat width has declined from over 18 inches to 16.5. Wow, that’s tight. Another network news show claimed it was down to 16 inches. Yikes, even tighter. One consumer advocate backs this up, reporting that U.S. airlines have reduced seat width by two inches since the 1980s.

Congress members have jumped in, too. This trend must stop, they point out.

Sounds dire.

The only problem is that these data are completely wrong. Actually, the opposite is true. Today, on major USA airlines consumers are sitting in economy-cabin seats with average width higher than twenty years ago – and as new airliners come into fleets, that will go up, not down.

Airlines have a lot is issues to answer for. But shrinking individual seat size is not one of them, and therefore these claims only serve to weaken legitimate air service questions that need to be pursued.

Claims Completely At Odds With Reality. Here are two facts raining a downpour of corrections on this parade mentioned above. No U.S. airline has cut seat width in the economy section by 2 inches in the past five years, or even earlier than that. There never was in the last 30 years an average economy seat width as wide as 18 inches, nor as narrow as 16.5.

These claims are completely inaccurate.

The Opposite Is True. Average Seat Width Has Increased. The truth is that the average seat size has increased at U.S. airlines in the last thirty years.

Let’s discuss this apparent heresy. A simple look at changes in airline fleets blows away the narrowing seat claim.

The seat width on single aisle airliners such as the Boeing 737 in 6-across economy cabins has not declined, as is often implied. No U.S. carrier has shrunk them.

Actually, the cabin cross-section dimensions of a new 737Max are essentially identical to the first 707s that entered service in 1958. In that tube, the economy cabin seats for the last three decades have been @ 17.1 to 17.5 inches. The construction of the seats has improved over the years, with new engineering and design. But they have not – repeat, not – been shrunk couple of inches narrower, as is unfortunately parroted by several media sources.

Wider Seats Have Been Entering For The Past Three Decades. Then, again over the past 30 years, other airliner platforms have come into use in U.S. fleets – all with wider seats in the economy cabin. Read again: wider seats.

Let’s take the Airbus A320 platform airliners. Since entry in the late 1980s, these single-aisle airliners have put thousands of seats into the sky at just over 18 inches in width. Then in the last 20 years came the entry of the smaller Embraer E175s and E190s, in fleets at American, Delta, United and Alaska. The economy seats on these are slightly wider than the Airbus airliner seats.

And most recently, we have the entry of the 100-to-120 seat Airbus A220, with seats nearing 19 inches. These are now operating at Delta and JetBlue.

So, the scorecard is pretty clear. Operators of Boeing single-aisle airliners (such as 737s and 757s) have not cut seat width. Plus, hundreds of airliners have been entering service with wider chairs in economy. None smaller.

As for wide body, twin-aisle airliners, such as 787s and 767s and A330s, there have been shifts in economy cabin configuration, but no U.S scheduled passenger airline has economy seats narrower than 17.0 to 17.5 inches.

On some of the retiring CRJ and ERJ “regional jets,” seats are at approximately 17 inches. The point is that the claim of average seat width of 16.5 inches simply is non-factual.

So, if existing economy cabin seats have not been narrowed (and they have not) and thousands of new platform airliners are coming in with wider chairs, the allegations that consumers are facing shrinking seat width are prima face nonsense. It’s possible some reports included first class seats in the mix. but that would not account for the completely bogus claim that airlines have now shrunk economy class seats down to 16.5-inch width across airline in the USA.

Where these claims came from is uncertain. What is certain is that they are not accurate.

Making Seats Narrower Won’t Deliver More Capacity. Somehow, many of these media pieces imply that with shrunken seat width, airlines can get more capacity. That is physically impossible on single-aisle airliners.

The fact is that 6-across is the maximum on 737s and A320 variants. On E175s and A220s, 5-across is the maximum that will fit. Cutting a few inches off the width of each seat won’t do bupkus to allow for more. This is the reason airlines have not reduced width – it would add zero additional capacity.

Passenger Legroom – A Different Story. Regardless of seat size, this is not to necessarily imply that air travel has become a haven of comfort. To be clear, there is certainly an issue with legroom.

“Seat pitch” is the distance between rows, and it varies from airline to airline. The argument can be made that at or under 30-inch distance between seat rows, the economy cabin is the equivalent of a Roman slave galley with beverage service. But not with narrower seats. Just more rows.

There are data which indicate that people over the years have physically changed. But regardless of the size of humans, which supposedly has increased, the fact remains that the average airline seat width has not declined.

Is Safety At Issue? The issue here is that these tight seat-pitch configurations meet current FAA emergency exit requirements. There is the legitimate question of whether these standards need to be revised. But those petitioning the agency to establish minimum seat size requirements need first to get the facts straight and not based on the opinions of media reporters or consumer gadflies who don’t know what they are talking about.

Comfort is an issue. But the main question is whether these cabins are safe. To determine this demands facts, not trendy opinions. Using the inaccurate canard that average seat width has been consistently narrowed does not further the issue.

Yes, this information goes counter to a lot of ambient thinking. But we have the facts, charts and data to back it up. Click here for our Aviation Unscripted video.