When flying was glamorous and your legs were stretched out

Good day folks, this is your pilot.
Welcome aboard Steerage Airlines. Please mooooove aside for our beefy passengers and leave plenty of room in the overhead for velour pouches.
If you are unable to fit into the restroom we have Florida Orange juice bottles available for your convenience, which have been tested and approved using our very own eman1200 system.
During flight, if you would like your dinner raped, please press the call button and ask for any Pilots of America member.
Thank you and enjoy your flight with Steerage Airlines.
 
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455 Bravo Uniform said:
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!
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I have a bad back and to be comfortable i need my seat to be full upright. The guy behind me is very happy. Most of the time the seat back in front of me is in my nose. I cannot open a laptop on the tray table and read the screen.

Fortunately I have a fat frequent flyer miles balance so I can be found in Business or First.

-Skip
 
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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Being 6'6" and 285lbs might change your point of view. The cheap seats are marginally capable of holding me and it's always a crap shoot to get someone in front of me that's compassionate enough not to recline their seat.
 
I'm looking a flights for a meeting in Vladivostok in October. UA can't get me there. The least expensive option on Expedia.com will send me around the world. Literally. Seattle to Beijing to Vladivostok. Home via Moscow and LAX. 4 different airlines, 3 of which I have never ridden before. Hainan, S7 and Aeroflot. Only the last leg, LAX to SEA, will be on Alaska Airlines. Seatguru.com tells me that I'm looking at 31 inch pitch for most of this trip. Yuck. I may, just for chuckles and grins, price business class. Probably can't afford it, but this is nuts. I'm 6'2" and legroom is important.
 
Have you tried Kayak? Or better yet, it might be worth it to call a local travel agent.
 
murphey said:
Have you tried Kayak? Or better yet, it might be worth it to call a local travel agent.
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Yep, Travel agent would be a good route if you don't want to do the legwork.

Looks like ANA (United partner) direct to NRT, S7 to VVO would be a good option, connections might not work for a continuous trip though, maybe United through SFO to NRT to avoid an overnight in NRT.

Or you could go old school and book a cruise. ;)
 
paflyer said:
With your own cash?
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Yes or miles back in the day. When I was consulting, the standard was refundable coach fare. Up grading to first was cheap. Same way when I an employee, not a big delta.

Cheers
 
Same here... if the flight was looking like it'd be an awful one, and I'd call the company travel agent and upgrade it... they'd bill the company for their portion, and I'd pay for the difference.

Didn't do it often since Domestic was my territory, and unless it's a coast-to-coast, back then seats were bigger and it wasn't a literal pain in the neck or back, but if it was long, I'd grab an upgrade.

Nowadays I doubt it would be as successful with fully loaded aircraft, and our often short call out times we had back then.

Company never cared, as long as they weren't billed more than the (usually full fare, see: last minute travel above) price of the original ticket.

If I had miles, great. I'd use those. But cash was used from time to time. We were well enough compensated for all that travel, that there really wasn't any point in showing up at the customer site looking like a hunchback and asking them if they knew a good local chiropractor. LOL.

And yeah, I did that one once, too. Chiropractor was an ex-NFL tackle... and holy crap... but he got me straightened out by Wednesday afternoon of a week long trip (that turned into two) so I could actually sleep at night.
 
Ghery said:
I'm looking a flights for a meeting in Vladivostok in October. UA can't get me there. The least expensive option on Expedia.com will send me around the world. Literally. Seattle to Beijing to Vladivostok. Home via Moscow and LAX. 4 different airlines, 3 of which I have never ridden before. Hainan, S7 and Aeroflot. Only the last leg, LAX to SEA, will be on Alaska Airlines. Seatguru.com tells me that I'm looking at 31 inch pitch for most of this trip. Yuck. I may, just for chuckles and grins, price business class. Probably can't afford it, but this is nuts. I'm 6'2" and legroom is important.
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If you're going that route, take EVA to Taipei. Business class rocks. 777, 4 across in reverse herringbone. Leaves SEA at 0100, gets into TPE at 0530. I think my son has flown Hainan before, he said they were decent. He's about 6'2" as well, didn't complain about the seats at all. And spring for the first class on Alaska. You can wait in their lounge at LAX and have free food and booze. :)
 
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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Planes are full. What nobody ever seems to address, when talking about seat pitch, is who doesn't get to fly if extra room is added and seats removed?

American, Delta, United, and others all have extra legroom economy seats available for sale for much less than first class. Watch the seat maps on flights, however, and it's always the regular economy (least legroom) seats that fill up first. The majority of passengers do not want to pay for extra space. They'd rather save the money and put up with the cramped seat for a couple of hours.

AAL's is reducing the legroom only in a couple of rows at the back of the 737s. It's not the whole airplane.

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.
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All major airlines have a published procedure for dealing with a COS but they are difficult to proactively enforce if the COS does not take the first steps.

First, there is no simple way to categorize whether or not someone is, or is not, a COS. Every body is shaped differently and most "heavy" passengers are somewhere in the gray area and not clearly in, or out, of the COS category. Even passengers of normal weight and size will spill over the strict confines of their seat at times depending on seating position.

Airline policies generally require, and allow, a COS to buy an extra seat and some offer refunds if the extra seat wouldn't have otherwise been used. Southwest, which doesn't assign seats, allows the COS to pre-board so that they can pick out a two-seat pair and they provide them with a sign, on boarding pass stock, to place on the extra seat to indicate that it is not available to other passengers.

The problem comes in when a COS does not follow these policies and the issue is uncovered on board. While the agents and flight attendants SHOULD be proactive about this, they are put in a difficult situation. It's like asking a women you don't know when she's due and finding out that she isn't pregnant. It's an awkward and embarrassing situation that most people will avoid.

When this situation occurs, it is the COS who should be reseated or removed, not the passenger who is seated next to them. This will likely require that the non-COS passenger bring it up with an F/A and ask for a gate agent to resolve the situation. If the gate agent won't fix it ask for the Complaint Resolution Officer (CRO) who the airlines are required to make available. The CRO is specially trained in the Air Carrier Access Act (the federal regulation which deals with disabilities on airline flights) and will be familiar with the airline's COS policy.
 
Larry in TN said:
All major airlines have a published procedure for dealing with a COS but they are difficult to proactively enforce if the COS does not take the first steps.

snip
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I had to Google "COS". To save the rest of you that trouble, it's PC for "fat". (Customer Of Size)
 
DeeG said:
If you're going that route, take EVA to Taipei. Business class rocks. 777, 4 across in reverse herringbone. Leaves SEA at 0100, gets into TPE at 0530. I think my son has flown Hainan before, he said they were decent. He's about 6'2" as well, didn't complain about the seats at all. And spring for the first class on Alaska. You can wait in their lounge at LAX and have free food and booze. :)
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Well, I bought the tickets last night. Business class is too expensive, so cattle car it is. Hainan and S7 going, S7 and Asiana coming back. 12 hours faster than continuing westbound. Plus, Seatguru tells me that the pitch on Aeroflot is 30-32 inches where Asiana is about 34 inches. As much as I don't trust Asiana to know how to land a plane (they're the ones who botched landing a 777 at SFO on a severe clear day) 20 hours on a pair of Aeroflot flights with 30-32 inches pitch tells me that my knees would still be hurting several weeks later. So, I ponied up the extra $700+ for the option of coming home more directly with more legroom. SEA-PEK-VVO going, VVO-ICN-SEA coming home. Now to update the IEC website, make my hotel reservations and, when the invitation letter arrives, start the process of getting a visa. All for 3 days of standards meetings.
 
Let me know what you think of Hainan & Asiana. We're heading back to BKK in December. I have to wait to buy tickets until we do our 2018 vacation picks (end of October). Prices look about the same between the three (including EVA).
 
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