When flying was glamorous and your legs were stretched out

3393RP

3393RP

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3393RP
I happened upon a website with airline articles of interest, hotel information, and other travel brochures. There are also copies of old airline seat maps.

I thought you guys might enjoy this one, especially after the announcement by American Airlines they are going to reduce the seat pitch in 737s to 29". Does anyone remember those 34" days? That's some serious leg room. The Boeing 727-200 was my favorite airliner. It was comfortable, quiet, and fast.

Vintage Airline Seat Map: United Airlines Boeing 727-200 (1979)

United Airlines had a few variations of the Boeing 727-200 flying the skies in 1979 and I’ve selected the -222A configuration for this installment of Vintage Airline Seat Maps.

Seating a total of 132 passengers, there were 14 seats in first class with 38” pitch and 118 in coach at 34” pitch (ah… those were the days of “economy plus” throughout coach). It’s interesting to note they had a flight attendant jumpseat at 15D in the overwing exit row. The later versions I flew in the 1980s didn’t have this location.
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29 inches.....Feds won't allow anything smaller than 28 inches.
 
I made a typo! Thank you for noticing it, I will correct my OP. I had seen a "blurb" kinda article about the change, and further investigation reveals the 29" pitch is just for three rows. Most of the economy class seats will have a 30" seat pitch.

Both of my knees have been replaced, and neither one likes to be bent more than 90 degrees for more than a a few minutes. That makes seat pitch a real issue for me.

Thanks again for the notice. It really has made a difference.

The distance between the back of one seat and the back of the next — known as the “pitch” in industry jargon — will be 30 inches for most of the economy seats on the 737-Max jet the carrier will start flying this year, American Airlines representatives said. For three rows in the economy section, the distance will be 29 inches.
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3393RP said:
I made a typo! Thank you for noticing it, I will correct my OP. I had seen a "blurb" kinda article about the change, and further investigation reveals the 29" pitch is just for three rows. Most of the economy class seats will have a 30" seat pitch.

Thanks again.
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The torture row? LOL.
 
Ahhh yes. Airlines can still do this, but not at the $99 price tag everyone wants.
 
I say bring back the Clippers! :thumbsup:

clipper.jpg
 
Kritchlow said:
Ahhh yes. Airlines can still do this, but not at the $99 price tag everyone wants.
Click to expand...

This is the crux of the problem. After deregulation, flying became "affordable" for the masses, but to be that cheap all kinds of frills, like food, and inches, were cut to bare bones. The economist Thomas Sowell proclaimed this an example of free market capitalism successfully bringing a service to everyone. I am a free market capitalist more than anything else, but this situation makes me wonder if we weren't better off before. When I was young tickets were expensive, but even the middle, middle class, which is what we were, could afford trips to Europe once in a while, it's not like it was reserved for only the rich. As far as I can tell the only "success" here is making flying affordable for the poorest who used to take Greyhound, and absolutely miserable for everybody, unless you are rich enough to spring for the first class ticket.
 
30 rows of seats on a given aircraft.

Seats recline a few inches, maybe 4"?

Why can't the d@mn back row get any recline?

Recline 4"/30 rows = 0.13 inches or 33mm less recline per 29 rows to give the poor schleps in the back some recline!
 
Rushie said:
As far as I can tell the only "success" here is making flying affordable for the poorest who used to take Greyhound, and absolutely miserable for everybody, unless you are rich enough to spring for the first class ticket.
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There is a political/social parallel to this, but unfortunately I'll have to take it to PilotSpin.com
 
Rushie said:
This is the crux of the problem. After deregulation, flying became "affordable" for the masses, but to be that cheap all kinds of frills, like food, and inches, were cut to bare bones. The economist Thomas Sowell proclaimed this an example of free market capitalism successfully bringing a service to everyone. I am a free market capitalist more than anything else, but this situation makes me wonder if we weren't better off before. When I was young tickets were expensive, but even the middle, middle class, which is what we were, could afford trips to Europe once in a while, it's not like it was reserved for only the rich. As far as I can tell the only "success" here is making flying affordable for the poorest who used to take Greyhound, and absolutely miserable for everybody, unless you are rich enough to spring for the first class ticket.
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Just my $0.02.

We might have "socialized" or "democratized" (depending on your point of view), there is nothing that says everyone is entitled to air travel nor are folks entitled to cheap air travel. And psychologically, cramming too many people in a tin can and not offering minimal comfort and or service leads to the kinds of confrontations we've seen lately. In theory, a true fee market capitalist operation would be self-correcting over time, but air travel is a regulated industry and the airline management has relied on those laws and regulations to enforce their own policies that lead to confrontations and bad service. Some airlines already have policies against photos and videos on their aircraft/facilities - if strictly enforced the incidents we have seen lately would never come to light.

So it's not really free market as it is now, but I believe that social media and the shared videos have done much more, much faster to implement change than regulation would or could have.

There is a place for regulation, capitalism, and social/regular media in creating a good, safe, and reasonable system.
 
I'm glad flying is available to the "masses" because I am one of them. I don't surf the internet to find the cheapest ticket, but I'm glad tickets are pretty affordable. Comfort is not important enough to me to pay substantially more for business, first, or even economy plus.
 
Everskyward said:
I'm glad flying is available to the "masses" because I am one of them. I don't surf the internet to find the cheapest ticket, but I'm glad tickets are pretty affordable. Comfort is not important enough to me to pay substantially more for business, first, or even economy plus.
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You must not take up a lot of space. A lot of other people do.
 
The US airline industry is supposedly unregulated - but every day congress likes to add more and more red tape and regulations. It makes it pretty hard to pretend there's much free market left when an industry's hands are so increasingly bound.

If you want it to be a certain way then you're going to have to pay for it to be that way. Airline travel is not a right and many have forgotten that. Without a doubt it has to be THE hardest of businesses to run successfully. IIRC an Airline tickets fare contains more taxes than alcohol and tobacco combined. If this red tape and regulations nonsense continues we might as well just go back to the old system - at least then you knew what you were getting.
 
Space is already tight in passenger jets and the one thing that really aggravates me is getting stuck next to an obese passenger. The first time this happened I had a window seat and the lady had me so crammed against the wall I could not move. Fortunately it was a short connecting flight from Augusta to Atlanta. After that I learned to pull the armrest down just as soon as I get in my seat to ensure I get at least that much room. Even with the armrest down I have been next to passengers that were so obese that their fat just expanded around the arm rest and it was still miserable. To me this not fair to the passengers that get stuck by them. If a person is so large that they can't fit in a seat they should have to buy two seats! I'm sure this is not politically correct, but passengers should have the right to the full space they purchased as small as that is these days.
 
Art VanDelay said:
...Without a doubt it has to be THE hardest of businesses to run successfully...
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:yeahthat:

Most people don't realise the airlines are dealing in a perishable commodity, no different than the greengrocer section of the supermarket. Once a commercial airliner leaves the ground every empty seat is like spoiled lettuce - zero value. That is one reason seat pricing is so convoluted and there is so much pressure on the airlines to sell all the seats on a flight. On a discount airline filling the last dozen seats are probably the "profit passengers".
 
Everskyward said:
I'm glad flying is available to the "masses" because I am one of them. I don't surf the internet to find the cheapest ticket, but I'm glad tickets are pretty affordable. Comfort is not important enough to me to pay substantially more for business, first, or even economy plus.
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:thumbsup:

This is what the American economy does better than most others in the world; lower the cost of a good or a service so it is available to a larger portion of the population than most other nations.

Too bad we can't figure out how to do that with health care (and we'll stop there before the ban hammer comes down).

wsuffa said:
...And psychologically, cramming too many people in a tin can and not offering minimal comfort and or service leads to the kinds of confrontations we've seen lately...
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I don't think it can all be blamed on seat pitch. Let's remember by the time we get to our seat we have been half stripped of our clothing, "randomly" irradiated, had our soles wanded, our hand baggage unpacked and our documents and identity re-verified three times.

I hate flying on domestic commercial flights. That's why I own an airplane, and I use it as much as practical. But if I have to go commercial within continental North America, I want a low cost fare at a reasonably convenient departure time. I won't pay extra to be subjected to the first class BS about "what a valued customer I am" from United or any of the others. An airline seat is a commodity.


Rushie said:
This is the crux of the problem. After deregulation, flying became "affordable" for the masses, but to be that cheap all kinds of frills, like food, and inches, were cut to bare bones. The economist Thomas Sowell proclaimed this an example of free market capitalism successfully bringing a service to everyone. I am a free market capitalist more than anything else, but this situation makes me wonder if we weren't better off before. When I was young tickets were expensive, but even the middle, middle class, which is what we were, could afford trips to Europe once in a while, it's not like it was reserved for only the rich. As far as I can tell the only "success" here is making flying affordable for the poorest who used to take Greyhound, and absolutely miserable for everybody, unless you are rich enough to spring for the first class ticket.
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I got news for you. The poor are still taking the Greyhound.

I grew up in a middle class family in one of those uniform solid middle class neighbourhoods in the 1960s. Modest, but nice homes. Big yards. The family car got traded in every 3 years. Nobody I knew ever flew on an airplane. It was far too expensive. Vacations were driving somewhere to see the distant cousins, or tenting out of the back of the Country Squire, and we were all envious when one of our classmates families did the "once in a lifetime" two week cross country excursion to Disneyland in Anaheim.

Now every college kid can buy a plane ticket to get home for Thanksgiving weekend. I don't think there's any benefit to going back to those nostalgic days you describe above, other than for the most well off.
 
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MickYoumans said:
Space is already tight in passenger jets and the one thing that really aggravates me is getting stuck next to an obese passenger. The first time this happened I had a window seat and the lady had me so crammed against the wall I could not move. Fortunately it was a short connecting flight from Augusta to Atlanta. After that I learned to pull the armrest down just as soon as I get in my seat to ensure I get at least that much room.
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Bingo. Learned this lesson the hard way on a flight from Detroit to Shanghai. I was crushed against the outer shell of the 777 by some dude who must have been a sumo wrestler. Made a miserable flight 10x worse. Next time I see *that guy* trying to sit in the seat adjacent to me, I'm gonna spill a 20 ounce diet coke in the seat before he sits. "oops."
 
GRG55 said:
:thumbsup:

This is what the American economy does better than most others in the world; lower the cost of a good or a service so it is available to a larger portion of the population than most other nations.

>snip<

I grew up in a middle class family in one of those uniform middle class neighbourhoods in the 1960s. Modest, but nice homes. Big yards. The family car got traded in every 3 years. Nobody I knew ever flew on an airplane. It was far too expensive. Vacations were driving somewhere to see the distant grandparents, or tenting out of the back of the Country Squire, and we were all envious when one of our classmates families did the "once in a lifetime" cross country excursion to Disneyland in Anaheim.

Now every college kid can buy a plane ticket to get home for Thanksgiving weekend. I don't think there's any benefit to going back to those nostalgic days you describe above, other than for the most well off.
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I also grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the 1960s, but I was one of those lucky kids that had been on an airplane a number of times, all the way across the country to California. I lived in NJ at the time. My parents were older and both had careers before they married, so they could afford this. Also, I was a solo so they only had to buy one extra ticket instead of 2 or more. I could still buy airline tickets even if they were more expensive, but I would rather not. I also think it's a good thing that air travel is accessible to a greater number of people now.
 
wsuffa said:
Just my $0.02.

We might have "socialized" or "democratized" (depending on your point of view), there is nothing that says everyone is entitled to air travel nor are folks entitled to cheap air travel. And psychologically, cramming too many people in a tin can and not offering minimal comfort and or service leads to the kinds of confrontations we've seen lately. In theory, a true fee market capitalist operation would be self-correcting over time, but air travel is a regulated industry and the airline management has relied on those laws and regulations to enforce their own policies that lead to confrontations and bad service. Some airlines already have policies against photos and videos on their aircraft/facilities - if strictly enforced the incidents we have seen lately would never come to light.

So it's not really free market as it is now, but I believe that social media and the shared videos have done much more, much faster to implement change than regulation would or could have.

There is a place for regulation, capitalism, and social/regular media in creating a good, safe, and reasonable system.
Click to expand...

Well put.

Everskyward said:
I'm glad flying is available to the "masses" because I am one of them. I don't surf the internet to find the cheapest ticket, but I'm glad tickets are pretty affordable. Comfort is not important enough to me to pay substantially more for business, first, or even economy plus.
Click to expand...

It's not even about comfort. It's about health. Blood clots because you can't stretch your legs. Increased cortisol because of the stress, no healthy food provided, potential for violence due to "air rage", etc. It has gone way beyond being an issue of comfort.

GRG55 said:
I got news for you. The poor are still taking the Greyhound.

I grew up in a middle class family in one of those uniform solid middle class neighbourhoods in the 1960s. Modest, but nice homes. Big yards. The family car got traded in every 3 years. Nobody I knew ever flew on an airplane. It was far too expensive. Vacations were driving somewhere to see the distant cousins, or tenting out of the back of the Country Squire, and we were all envious when one of our classmates families did the "once in a lifetime" two week cross country excursion to Disneyland in Anaheim.

Now every college kid can buy a plane ticket to get home for Thanksgiving weekend. I don't think there's any benefit to going back to those nostalgic days you describe above, other than for the most well off.
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It's not like we flew every year. The airplane trips were three saved up for. Except for the very poorest, most could manage that. Most vacations we took were by car. When we moved across the country we took the train. Pullman sleepers. YES, it would be nice to have kept that form of travel. I'd take a long train ride across country in a comfortable compartment over the misery of commercial airplane travel any day. But in a sick reversal, passenger train has now become too expensive. And the rail system so demolished that you cannot use it to get anywhere without going around your a . . to get to your elbow. The best passenger transportation system man ever created was ruined by the government.

As Bill said above the free market in theory SHOULD correct the air travel problem, but it isn't. There are a lot of reasons and he has a good point, it's still not truly a free market at all.
 
paflyer said:
There is a political/social parallel to this, but unfortunately I'll have to take it to PilotSpin.com
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I'll leave this thread and follow. Too much politics going into creating the mess we have to continue talking about it in this thread.
 
Rushie said:
It's not even about comfort. It's about health. Blood clots because you can't stretch your legs. Increased cortisol because of the stress, no healthy food provided, potential for violence due to "air rage", etc. It has gone way beyond being an issue of comfort.
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OK, but I was only speaking for myself. I'm completely aware that other people feel differently.
 
The snowball effect ...it never stops.
The rage has found it's way into pretty much every aspect of life.
I see it on the road, in the airlines, in the schools, workplace, etc. The reasons are various and multiple. I contribute some of it to over prescribing medications, but that's an entire 'nother rant.

I believe we are exponentially over populating, and our infrastructure cannot (will not) handle it. Everything from schools, to grocery stores, to highways, electrical grids, housing, land, etc.
Anyone ever do the "work 30 days, starting with a penny and it doubles every day" thing? If not, check it out. Pretty amazing....and scary.
That's what I believe is happening to our population, with no end in sight.

The compression I see already is staggering.
I live 4 miles from work, in a small town, straight down one road. Even so, I have to watch every move the other drivers make to avoid collisions.
Grocery store? fuggedaboutit! 15 minutes and I'm ready to run out of there. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, 20 times in 15 minutes. I just need cheese for my enchilada dammit !!!!!!!
 
kyleb said:
Bingo. Learned this lesson the hard way on a flight from Detroit to Shanghai. I was crushed against the outer shell of the 777 by some dude who must have been a sumo wrestler. Made a miserable flight 10x worse. Next time I see *that guy* trying to sit in the seat adjacent to me, I'm gonna spill a 20 ounce diet coke in the seat before he sits. "oops."
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He's wearing that diaper so no issue; the quicker picker upper.
 
Skyrys62 said:
The compression I see already is staggering.
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That's the beauty of not being beholden to anyone. You get to choose your own schedule. My Costco/Sams clubs runs are timed at 8:15 pm when everybody else are tucking the kids into bed and getting ready for work the next day. I basically have the stores to myself. Grab fuel at the same time. No lines. Grocery runs are early in the morning when everybody else is playing bumper cars on the freeway. I have the store to myself except for the retirees who have the same idea. Holidays and weekends are just another day to me. When camping, I arrive early in the week, pick out my spot, and then leave on a Tuesday or Wed after everybody else has left and traffic has died down. If I have to meet a client, I only do the local freeways between 10:00 am and 2pm. I don't miss the rat race one single bit. ;)
 
MickYoumans said:
Space is already tight in passenger jets and the one thing that really aggravates me is getting stuck next to an obese passenger. The first time this happened I had a window seat and the lady had me so crammed against the wall I could not move. Fortunately it was a short connecting flight from Augusta to Atlanta. After that I learned to pull the armrest down just as soon as I get in my seat to ensure I get at least that much room. Even with the armrest down I have been next to passengers that were so obese that their fat just expanded around the arm rest and it was still miserable. To me this not fair to the passengers that get stuck by them. If a person is so large that they can't fit in a seat they should have to buy two seats! I'm sure this is not politically correct, but passengers should have the right to the full space they purchased as small as that is these days.
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I believe what you're trying to say is "If you cannot fit your ass into a size 38 seat, get a larger seat." Similar experience, similar sentiment. The one next to me was at least a size 54. They really should of had purchased the row of seats.
 
I need economy plus. On international flights, whatever airlines call it, there is a mid-level class where the seats are equivalent to first class, domestic. I MUST sit there, because my back and butt ache after more than 8 hours in an economy seat. Sucks, though, that my cello has to have the same type of seat.
 
I remember when it was glamorous and I was all stretched out. I was 'bout 14, 5'4 or so and the FA's were stews and all looked like.........just google PSA stewardess images.
 
denverpilot said:
E4 SAFETY CERTIFIED Adjustable 7-24" Airplane Seatbelt Extender - FITS ALL AIRLINES except Southwest - FREE VELOUR POUCH
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Fatties don't have to buy them. The airlines provide them. They may have to wait until the safety briefing is done because often it's the extender they use to show how the buckle works.

I got stuck in a middle seat in United's Ecomony Plus next to an "upgraded" fatty. Literally, I got off. Fortunately, they found me another seat.
 
flyingron said:
Fatties don't have to buy them. The airlines provide them. They may have to wait until the safety briefing is done because often it's the extender they use to show how the buckle works.

I got stuck in a middle seat in United's Ecomony Plus next to an "upgraded" fatty. Literally, I got off. Fortunately, they found me another seat.
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I understand that.

The point was, look at how many positive comments those (and numerous others) get on Amazon... there's a LOT of people buying their own...

I mean, a free velour case? Who could resist!
 
No sense crying over spilt milk. Genie ain't getting put back in the bottle. Proxemics is a real thing and airlines continue to push the boundary of social flammability in a Country where said proxemics are much larger than in hyper-dense population groups of Central and Eastern Asians Countries. Like scorpions in a paper bag and God holding the open end, shaking it for all it's worth. The results are predictable to me.
 
Or the crap, that's so far 90% caused by bad passenger behavior, and then stuck on the internet into a media society that needs something to fill hundreds and hundreds of hours of "24/7 news" and there's just not enough cheap to gather stories to fill all of them...

... is way overblown.

Airlines moved 895 million passengers successfully just in the U.S. airports, in 2015.

Yeah, it's cattle car service, but it's a lot of damned cattle. Mooo.

We have one event, started by a guy who sold narcotics for sex, and then became a professional poker player, figuring out his odds of a jackpot from the airline for the COPS beating his ass... and getting it...

Creating motivation for others to misbehave, and the highest possible BS levels of emotional outbursts from people who don't even fly, once a year, if that... online because they're bored...

And now we've seen like what? Five events total, and only one with questionable policies of the airlines involved?

LOL. 5/895,000,000 ... isn't a real problem.

Hell, 1000/895,000,000 isn't.

Find 1000 events to put on TV/Internet "news" sites, and they'll lose all of their viewership and commenters out of sheer boredom.

Going to need something more interesting than mass transit stories to keep the public interest for long.

I suspect the "airlines are evil" stories are about to peter out. The advertisers will be wanting new fodder for the instant information grist mill.

Hard to sell mortgages, tax legal help, walk in tubs, weenie and mental health pills, home-delivered catheters, and snuggies with last week's news story.

The funniest one, was the folks who thought United was being punished by the stock market for their event. They're worth a billion more dollars on paper this week than they were before it started. That's billion, with a B.
 
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