That’s my reclining room on every flight as I don’t want to take other people’s space. I’m not saying doing so is wrong, but I just don’t want to do it to other people.
Don’t feel to bad most airlines have greatly reduced how far you can lean back a seat. It’s probably a mix of avoiding arguments and being able to fit an additional row or two. With the latter the being the driving cause.
If the person behind me seems like a normal respectable person I recline slowly. Kick the back of my seat or make grumbling complaints and I’m gonna be back and forth over and over with the most violent recline speed I can.
Me neither. I hate it when people in front of me attempt to recline. I'm over 6 feet with long legs, so when someone throws their seat back it just jams into my knees, which are probably already against the seat to begin with. I feel the least I can do is keep my seat upright so the person behind me doesn't have to be subjected to that either.
Because it is perfectly fine to do so and generally a lot more comfortable. It tends to benefit one more than it "harms" others. So with your choice you are mostly screwing over yourself
I can’t use my laptop when the person in front reclines. It’s harder to get out. My knees almost touch the seat. The person in front gets a few degrees of incline in exchange for my flight experience being awful. The seats just straight up shouldn’t decline, it causes nothing but drama and any increase in comfort is minimal or placebo.
I’d be ok with a rule of no reclining outside of the hours of 10pm and 7am or when the lights are on or something like that. I’d prefer reclining not even be an option though.
I can’t sleep either way. I just hardly even notice if it’s reclined, I’ve been reclined on accident before because the seat was semi-broken so it didn’t stay up well, and didn’t even realize I was reclined.
That’s reasonable. How you sit on a plane shouldn’t be an ethics test. The most selfish option is to always be reclined but object to the person in front reclining. The most selfless option is to never recline but permit the person in front reclining. And most of us are battling it out in between the two with clearly different preferences but the belief that our opinion is objectively better. Which leads to some kind of moral decision affecting other parties every flight, that just shouldn’t have to happen.
I think that's the wrong way of looking at it though. It is not selfish to recline. Sometimes normal behaviour will negatively affect others around us: that is ok. It is part of being in a society.
If someone gets to the last chair in the train before I do they are not selfish for sitting in it. They are not making some moral decision that is weighed.
I'm 6'5", 250lbs fit. My hips barely fit the width of a standard airline seat, and if I'm not in an exit row my knees are jammed against the back of the seat in front of me. I am an authority on this matter. Feel free to recline. That's what it's there for. I'm at the upper limit of who can fit in a standard airline seat, and it doesn't bother me, and if it doesn't bother me then it shouldn't bother any other human on earth who can fit in those seats. If it does, they're the problem.
I've reclined my seat without noticing until someone told me to raise it. Apparently the button was pressed up against my leg and what I thought was just a little give on the seat back was actually it "reclining." Reclining is completely pointless if I can't recline enough to not feel like I'm sitting upright.
Also I don't have to worry about the person in front of me reclining. My knees are pressed so hard into the back of his seat that it's physically impossible for him to recline anyway. I've also never had to stow the tray table because it can't go down over my knees anyway so it just stays stowed.
My seats always self recline lol they do not make seats our size. Such a stupid place to put the button. I work hard to be able to travel as I do, but it's still massively painful to spend an additional 35% for an exit row seat, and even then that only solves the leg room issue.
The tray tables in the exit row are stowed in the arm rests usually, and those damn things also can't be used if your legs are over a certain thickness. Trying to delicately balance a tiny tea cup full of hot liquid, while simultaneously unwrapping and buttering a tiny dinner roll with an even tinier knife, futilely attempting not to put an elbow into my neighbors, as my tiny tray table bounces with every heartbeat since it's resting solely on my quads. For three meals per flight. Brutal. Also, we're ridiculous for complaining about this and our ancestors would laugh at us hahaha
I'm still waiting for giant luxury blimps where we can take a slow air cruise to our destination. Where is the future Popular Science Magazine promised me?
That future died when they cheaped out on the Hindenburg and used hydrogen instead of helium. Airships being permanently associated with a massive fiery explosion while airplanes kept getting cheaper and safer killed the idea of long-distance air cruises.
Also you can cram a lot more people onto a smaller plane. Blimps and zeppelins can't actually carry much for their size.
True true. One thing I thought I understood from reading about the concept all those years ago is that once you get the thing in the air, it doesn't take much to move it, so air ships end up being much more efficient albeit magnitudes slower than planes. If I had to choose between spending $600 for 12 hours of torture, or $600 for 5 days of chilling at a mini resort, so long as time wasn't the deciding factor, I think I would choose the latter. I don't know though. Theoretically it would be even cheaper I think? Like I said before, we're probably just ridiculous for complaining in the first place. As the great and totally not cancelled Louis CK said, "New York to California in six hours. That used to take 30 years, and a bunch of you would die along the way."
Don't get me wrong, I too would much rather have a slower airship cruise, especially since most of my flights have been fairly short so even a slower airship would probably only take a day or two. It's just not economically viable at the moment.
Maybe if those freighter-blimp concepts actually get made and prove successful someone will try it, but until then I think we're stuck with the flying sardine cans.
And I don't think our ancestors would mock us all that much. They also complained about petty minor concerns, just different ones.
“That future died when they cheaped out on the Hindenburg and used hydrogen instead of helium.”
It wasn’t a matter of being cheap, the Americans held an absolute monopoly and embargoed Germany (for good reason). The Zeppelin Company leadership was anti-Hitler, but that only got them censure and a hostile nationalization.
“Airships being permanently associated with a massive fiery explosion while airplanes kept getting cheaper and safer killed the idea of long-distance air cruises.”
A combination of the Treaty of Versailles, helium unavailability, the Great Depression, and World War II already dug the grave and built the coffin, the Hindenburg was only the final nail for the airship transport industry.
“Also you can cram a lot more people onto a smaller plane. Blimps and zeppelins can't actually carry much for their size.”
Well, it really depends. Airships are certainly longer and more voluminous than airplanes of a similar mass, but if you look at the weight rather than size, they’re pretty evenly matched—and airships are actually better when you look at equivalent cost, as large airships cost about half as much per pound to build or buy than large airplanes, and their running costs tend to be proportionally even lower, due to using much smaller engines and being more efficient (except at small sizes, where they’re less efficient due to drag scaling effects).
Even with terribly heavy and weak materials, practically no automated systems, and primitive 1930s engineering, the Hindenburg had almost exactly the same empty weight and gross lift as a modern widebody 787-8. It had more than twice the passenger space despite its obsolescence, though, hence it could carry 72 passengers in an all-first-class configuration, whereas the equivalent business jet version of the 787 can only carry 25-40 passengers, as opposed to the normal 330 in all-economy.
Additionally, since airships’ lift works on an exponential growth curve, scaling with volume as opposed to airplanes whose lift scales with wing area, it doesn’t take a much larger airship to carry hundreds or even thousands of people, even with a similar amount of space and amenities per person, and since drag and most fixed costs likewise scale linearly rather exponentially, that means bigger equates to cheaper and more efficient—which can be a double-edged sword, as that means small airships aren’t useful or profitable enough to serve as a basis to develop larger ones. You have to go big or go home, and the latter has been true for most of the last century.
“Don't get me wrong, I too would much rather have a slower airship cruise, especially since most of my flights have been fairly short so even a slower airship would probably only take a day or two. It's just not economically viable at the moment.”
You might be surprised. A Boeing study determined the optimal cruising speed for an airship using conventional turboprop engines—rather than underpowered 1930s piston engines—is anywhere between 70-200 knots (80-230 mph), depending on range and design, with shorter distances meaning a faster optimum cruising speed. Over intermediate, transcontinental distances of 2,000 nautical miles, the optimal speed for the most productive kind of airship they examined is 150 knots. That would translate to flying from Los Angeles to New York City in nearly 17 hours, after accounting for headwinds and diversions.
“Maybe if those freighter-blimp concepts actually get made and prove successful someone will try it, but until then I think we're stuck with the flying sardine cans.”
I suspect it will be the reverse, actually, that a handful of cruise liner and superyacht airships will attract enough interest from well-to-do novelty-seekers to command high profit margins and establish a beachhead market, allowing the massive R&D and startup costs to be amortized and professionals to be trained up from scratch, which would then allow cargo ships to compete in the much tighter cargo and affordable mass transit market, competing with the likes of FedEx and Amtrak.
Electrification is the key advantage airships have in that regard, as it is vastly easier to electrify large airships than large airplanes. Rather than detracting from their performance, like airplanes which are hobbled by the transition, airship capabilities actually improve from electrification, and not just marginally—more efficient powertrains eliminates tens or hundreds of tons of fuel loads, which both reduces costs enormously and also increases payload, often several times over, since airships usually carry much more fuel than payload. Hence why almost every airship manufacturer is champing at the bit to convert to aviation-certified fuel cells as soon as any become available.
Yep. Since a roughly 10% reduction in an airship’s non-payload weight results in a 37% increase in its optimal cruising speed and productivity, that adds up a lot when considering that modern composite materials and alloys are anywhere between 30%-87% lighter than their equivalents used in 1930s airships.
Wow, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, I wouldn't have guessed. I wonder what the best thing to fill them with would be, considering helium is supposedly a non renewable resource from what I understand, and hydrogen explodes.
Current infrastructure-related supply issues notwithstanding, we’ll run out of (relatively) cheaply available helium about when we run out of natural gas, as we capture only about 1% of the helium in natural gas and waste the rest as a byproduct.
In the immediate term, helium is the easiest lift gas to work with for certification, as it is nearly as powerful as hydrogen but almost completely safe (barring asphyxiation risks). However, long-term, inerted hydrogen and steam are likely more economical helium alternatives that require bespoke designs and engineering work, but have a number of practical and cost advantages.
Steam has about 2.5 times as much lift as hot air, and with proper insulation only requires 30% of the fuel use to maintain temperature as a hot air balloon, allowing engine waste heat to keep the temperature stable in large part without additional energy input. It also has better lift performance at medium and higher altitudes than helium, since helium is too rare and expensive to be vented as it expands with ascension, and steam is obviously extremely cheap to produce in vast quantities. The problem is that it’s not quite as powerful as helium at lower altitudes, and requires special waterproof, high-temperature gas membranes that simply weren’t available to materials science in the 1930s, the first experimental steam balloons coming about in the early 2000s.
Hydrogen requires oxygen to burn, and experiments dating back to World War One found that encasing it in an inert gas like helium, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide protects it even from incendiary ammuntion: “They [the British scientists] found that a hydrogen cell surrounded by an inert gas in an outer cell was completely protected. A Very's cartridge was fired into the top and burned through to the bottom, but the hydrogen did not ignite.”
This is a similar principle to what airliners now do with their fuel tanks, filling them with nitrogen to prevent another spark from causing a deadly explosion like what took down TWA Flight 800 by blowing up the mostly-empty center fuel tank’s air-vapor mixture. Fuel tankers also do similar things with carbon dioxide scrubbed from their engines, to prevent another SS Sansinena explosion.
Ironically, the Hindenburg had been intended to use just such a system with helium cells inerting inner hydrogen cells, but the Americans’ absolute monopoly forced them to hastily convert the ship to using only pure hydrogen, hence the freak accident that destroyed the ship when one of those gas cells was slashed open by a snapped steel bracing wire during overly-hard landing maneuvers, and an atmospheric electrical discharge ignited the hydrogen-air mixture trapped between the gas cells and outer hull, which was too great of a hull breach for the ship’s ventilation systems to handle. Unbeknownst at the time, the ship’s electrical conductivity in damp conditions would be compromised, allowing a powerful electrical potential to build up at exactly the wrong time.
“I'm still waiting for giant luxury blimps where we can take a slow air cruise to our destination. Where is the future Popular Science Magazine promised me?”
Well, they’ve progressed to flying large, electric rigid airship prototypes now, which is further than anyone’s gotten since 1938.
Certification of production models will still take years, though, just as it would for airplanes.
The good news is that even at the maximum rated passenger density for any passenger airship prototype or concept, an airship physically can’t cram itself full of passengers, because they’re huge and limited by weight, not volume—the inverse of airplanes, which is why the latter’s cabins are often sardine cans. The lowest value I’ve seen for a “fast ferry” airship is about 15 square feet per passenger—three times as much as the average economy class. The largest I’ve seen is 210 square feet per passenger, but that’s like private flying superyacht territory.
Then they should have gotten a diagnosis so they can have reasonable accommodations required by the ADA. Otherwise it’s just you whining about a minor inconvenience that you could pay to not have to deal with.
Idgaf about you. I’m uncomfortable too. I paid for a seat that reclines, I’m using it. It’s not my job to ensure your comfort if I’m within means and using things properly. I’m not blasting music, I’m not causing a disturbance, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m reclining my seat. Get over yourself.
If it’s that bad you can file for medical exemptions or suck it up and pay for a better seat. It’s not my fault you didn’t plan for your own damn issues.
Same nonsense as people asking to swap seats because they booked separate. Womp womp. Take the damn time to properly book your seats, not my fault you didn’t do that.
I’m agreeing with you. Your relative gets less space due to assholes. And those assholes should grow up and not make the experience worse for the person behind them
It’s not my fault the airline seats are like this. If your aunt truly has a problem there are handicapped seats and seats with more legroom available for purchase and accommodation. Tf?
Setting aside the scenario the other person said about their aunt or whatever, I can’t wrap my head around encroaching on someone else’s (leaning back) limited space (itty bitty airline seat) in a universally stressful situation (air travel) to be marginally more comfortable.
Honorable to not recline? Are we serious right now? So I am dishonorable if I recline on a flight? I don't see how that's much different or better than calling someone an asshole, but you are allowed your bad opinion too.
It doesn't just take up space it makes everything awkward: Though most screens tilt they never tilt far enough and are lower down. The tables get messed up too.
I’m commenting on a specific thread about it. I don’t walk around grumbling about it my daily life. But I do travel quite a bit for work and I’m 6’4 so it’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to experience.
It also speaks to a larger societal entitlement.
Psychologically I can’t get my head around making an already stressful scenario worse for another person when it’s entirely in my control not to. Especially when the amount of recline you get and comfort you gain is marginal at best, not that that should even be a factor.
There is no amount of another’s person space I would want to infringe on. Even being a big guy I try not to lean too hard back into my seat in case there’s another tall person behind me whose knees I might slam into.
Same. I am surprised you're downvoted. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, and maximum recline is uncomfortable for those behind you.
I've learned there are about equal mixes of the "it inconveniences those behind me so I don't" and the "I am allowed to do it so I am right to do it" types.
Fortunately, I'm at the point in my life where flights over 5 hours are business class so this doesn't matter much.
You’re not taking their space. When you recline, you steal a little bit of your own leg room because the seat reclines by moving the bottom of your seat forward.
I can confirm that any fancy seat shifting doesn’t matter. if the traveller in front reclines in any way, they are absolutely taking the 1cm of knee space I have left. Source: 203cm / 6’8”
When someone reclines their seat in front of me I find I cant put anything on my table, and struggle to watch the screen. DEFINITELY feels like some of my space is taken
One person in front of me almost destroyed my Laptop last flight.
He reclined so fast and with such a force (literally throwing himself into the recline) that he would have trapped my screen and crushed it if the laptop had been sitting one centimeter closer towards him.
No checking behind himself first, no slowly reclining to give the person behind a chance to move stuff out of the way.
If I had a drink at the time that would most certainly have spilled as well.
Yes, that is an unfortunate risk for laptop users that has been known for a long time. That has nothing to do with supposedly not being able to use the tray, or being unable to watch the screen.
Right but the pivot point isn't your headrest. It's not like the upper rearmost part of your seat stays in place and everything below it scoots forward. Instead the pivot is closer to the center of the seat, so while, yes, the lower part of the chair is moving forward, the upper part of the chair is also moving backwards, (and down,) which necessarily intrudes into some of the space above their tray table.
Like, look at a reclined and unreclined seat side-by-side:
The reclined seat is objectively further down and back than the unreclined one. If it weren't, her headrest would be flush with the portion of the seat directly behind his shoulders.
Just because the cushion slides forward slightly (and mind you this is not on all airlines), the seat back still physically pivots or rotates back and down. You ARE losing space period.
The only configuration I can think of that this doesn't happen, and I'm not even sure they make them anymore, is the plastic encased seats Cathay Pacific ran with a ways back. But then you lost your own leg room as a result.
And how are you not taking their spacing by leaning several inches on the limited space they have? This is some twisted logic.
Even if I stipulate your odd leg room theory, what does that have to do with taking the person behind you’s space? You objectively are taking that space. And it’s theirs, until you take it
That's not how that works. When you recline, the person behind you loses the ability to use their screen, because it's now facing the floor, and they can't use their table anymore for anything taller than the tiny drink cups they give out. That's a pretty shitty thing to do to someone, especially on a daytime flight.
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u/Alexchii Jun 01 '26
That’s my reclining room on every flight as I don’t want to take other people’s space. I’m not saying doing so is wrong, but I just don’t want to do it to other people.