Seat Recline Wars and airline stupidity

[brianw999]

Let me make one thing clear here. I am not denying anyone the right to recline their seat, indeed I do so myself. I ask the passenger behind if they are OK with that. Most passengers are smaller than me and can remain comfortable with the seat in front reclined. It's called showing consideration to others.
The passenger was dragged off to the police station not because he exercised his right to recline his seat but because he deliberately continued to cause me extreme pain.
He assaulted me, that's a criminal offence and that's why he got dragged off to the police station.
Actually, I was the one who showed some consideration for him because if I had pressed charges he would very likely have got a suspended prison sentence as a minimum. Our UK courts seem to take a more serious view of airborne offences compared to the same offence on the ground.

[Gabriel]

By the way, Brian, you cannot get really trapped like that by the seat back in front of you being reclined. The reclining system just limits how far back the seat back can go, but the airplane seat backs can freely swing forward.

Yes, you had the weight of the back of your passenger pressing against your knees, but you are a quite robust man. A nice push with your hands on the seat back would have released you from the trap.

[BoeingBobby]

One of the biggest benefits of having the "front" seat is not having to deal with this!

[Evan]

One of the biggest benefits of having the "front" seat is not having to deal with this!

Shhhhhhh. If the industry is reading this they will know there is hidden revenue in the cockpit and move the bulkhead forward to the back of the pilot's seats...

[TeeVee]

Shhhhhhh. If the industry is reading this they will know there is hidden revenue in the cockpit and move the bulkhead forward to the back of the pilot's seats...

nah, that would only add a few inches to the lav which i believe they are trying to figure out how to get rid of as it is...

[Evan]

sorry, you're wrong here. deregulation occurred a loooooooong time before seat wars. the real culprit is corporate greed and wall street turning every publicly traded company into their personal whores.

But that was always inevitable after deregulation. Yes, there was a time when the boardroom said, "where can we we extract some extra revenue?" but also, "we must keep basic civic decency in mind". That time is gone. Inevitably greed would win over decency. Corporate efficiency experts are not sentient beings and upper management are just hollowed out former souls in the waiting room for hell. If there is a dime to be made, they will find a way to make eleven cents out of it.

Why? Because, in their purely economic morality, it is immoral not to exploit any path to revenue that is not explicitly prohibited by law (including the grey areas). It is IMMORAL to these people to not screw you.

If we had regulations that set a minimum seat pitch, and a government that wasn't in the pocket of industry but rather in touch with the people it is meant to serve, that seat pitch would be about 32-34" and we could all recline and still be cordial to one another. Maybe we would be paying an extra $50 for the flight, but we would also check our first bag for free and not have to pay for the seat assignment or the basic meal. In other words, we would probably pay the same or less.

If we had regulation, we could also have maybe two to three rows of 'big and tall' seating for the largest passengers (or a few lucky smaller ones when they aren't needed). Just as we have 'handicap' spaces on trains and busses today.

The industry likes to say that the people don't want regulation, and they preach about how it would make flying vastly more expensive. It's all smoke and mirrors. The people want regulation even if they don't know it. They want to fly in comfort and be treated decently. That will never happen with deregulation.

But pundits keep up the regulation=socialism propaganda and scare-monger us from voting for a government that would represent our needs over the needs of those hell-bound executives and their shareholder minions...

Bottom line is this: the market will not regulate itself against incursions of civic decency. That is a myth. Instead of fighting each other in the aisles, we need to flight the people that put us in that situation. We must fight them with petitions and votes. Imagine Congress passing a minimum seat-pitch bill. I think it would be a very popular thing in their re-election campaign...

[3WE]

Let me make one thing clear here. I am not denying anyone the right to recline their seat, indeed I do so myself. I ask the passenger behind if they are OK with that. Most passengers are smaller than me and can remain comfortable with the seat in front reclined. It's called showing consideration to others.

Again, that's your rule. (Not saying it's a bad rule, but it's yours and not the airlines (and not Gabriels nor my rule.)

The airlines encourage rulelessness...

Passengers: Go fight over the overhead bin space, go fight over seat reclining!

If the airlines want to start following your rule, great, I'm all for it! But instead, they are silent and leave it to you to do your thing, Gabriel to weasel his free XL seat, and me who assumes that since I've been reclining (and been reclined upon) in chairs designed to recline for over 50 years without incident, that it's OK to recline.

...and if some old grumpy fat guy bitches when I recline, he might just be the self-entitled a$$ who put his roller bag right above my head where I had hoped to put my roller bag...

Gabriel: Why should you get off scott-free if you need a seat pitch that 99% of us don't need? I frequently pay extra to sit with my family, and there's a hell of a lot more of us than 1% flying as families (of course, folks cheat the system and fight it out on that now too!).

Brian- not saying that the man was right and that you were wrong, but I am not comfortable ranking it as a genuine violation of the law. It was not a premeditated assault on your legs, the gentleman did move his seat up after a short while. As Gabriel said, there were options for you to stand up, you informed no one ahead of time that reclining would cause significant harm to you and I restate that the flying environment is all about fighting over the precious space...I don't think it will stand up in court particularly well.

[3WE]

...and as a funny caveat...

Who has wound up in seats that would not "lock" in the upright position?...

...very slight pressure and they ease on back, unless you spend the flight doing some nice pilates ab-scrunch exercises.

I had a very slippery seat once and a FA who was at first a bit firm, forcing me to say (and demonstrate), "look, I'll try but this seat moves back with the slightest pressure".

I'm not a super frequent traveler but remember several instances of seats that would slowly ease back.

[3WE]

One of the biggest benefits of having the "front" seat is not having to deal with this!

As I look at a lot of airliner cockpits, you guys are surrounded by so much stuff, including giant center pedestals, I sometimes wonder if you really do have "leg and elbow room".

I sat in a museum DC-9 once and my 'personal space' didn't seem all that different from a Cessna 150...I could bend my knee's down a little more, but had somewhat less window access, and it required a tad of artful maneuvering to get into the seat- and I recall how the leg area was telescoping inward following the "nose cone" (not too different than the side of a 150 telescoping in behind the firewall).

Of course, with your ride being a 747 type thing, maybe you do have some space.

[elaw]

I'm not sure it helps to solve the argument any, but I thought of an interesting analogy to this situation.

Suppose some municipality built an intersection, installed a traffic light there, then set the light so it was always green for both roads.

Okay, yes, in driving there's a (written? unwritten?) "see and avoid" rule similar to that in flying.

But drivers also have a reasonable expectation that when approaching a traffic light, if it's green they can proceed without the danger of colliding with cross traffic... a danger that is now present because everyone has a green light.

So when a collision inevitably happens, whose fault is it?

Complicating matters is that for the analogy to better represent the airline situation, it would not be just *one* municipality doing that at one intersection, it would be almost all of them.

[3WE]

I'm not sure it helps to solve the argument any, but I thought of an interesting analogy to this situation.

Suppose some municipality built an intersection, installed a traffic light there, then set the light so it was always green for both roads.

Okay, yes, in driving there's a (written? unwritten?) "see and avoid" rule similar to that in flying.

But drivers also have a reasonable expectation that when approaching a traffic light, if it's green they can proceed without the danger of colliding with cross traffic... a danger that is now present because everyone has a green light.

So when a collision inevitably happens, whose fault is it?

Complicating matters is that for the analogy to better represent the airline situation, it would not be just *one* municipality doing that at one intersection, it would be almost all of them.

EXCELLENT!

You've captured the gray area between "right and wrong", "the law", "traditional expectations," and "how the system is addressing (or stimulating) the problem".

[elaw]

Yeah I left out the part of the analogy where if you pay 10x the price, you can drive on different roads with double the speed limit and no intersections.

[3WE]

Yeah I left out the part of the analogy where if you pay 10x the price, you can drive on different roads with double the speed limit and no intersections and attendants serving you food and alcohol.

Fixed.

[ATLcrew]

Why was this action taken despite my request not to take any further action ? Well, I believe that it was because during boarding I had identified myself as a paramedic and that I was happy to assist the crew in the event of any medical incident.

Did they also bow to you and declare themselves most unworthy?

[brianw999]

If I had been able to stand up I would have done so believe me but I was wedged into the seat and couldn't move. My knees were wedged apart and my hips were locked. I was genuinely scared that I was going to suffer permanent orthopaedic harm. Attempts to stand would have further injured me.
No, the guy didn't initially intend to harm me but when it became obvious that he had harmed me and indeed was continuing to harm me he initially still refused to move to allow me to release myself. He only moved under threat of legal action which means he knew he was doing wrong. That was when the harm became a deliberate assault. That was when he broke the law.

He was actually lucky that the police took him away. I may not be the quickest human on two legs but I weigh 20 stone plus. I was of a mind to apply some personal punitive action outside of the airport. Trouble is....there might be a witness !!!

But to get back to the subject of seat recline. I personally think that all seating systems with less than 34" seat pitch should be unreclineable. The over wing exit seats do not recline so why not every other seat ? It would save an awful lot of argument for the sake of a measly 6 to 8 degrees of recline. I used to enjoy flying but these days, unless I'm in premium or business class I hate it.