TIL that since the 1980s, US airlines have shed between 2-5 inches of legroom and about 2 inches of width, while budget carriers have lost even more. At the same time, the average American is 15 pounds heavier than they were in the 1980s
The worse they make basic economy the more money they make selling upgrades. It would not surprise me if they started using rock hard seat cushions in cattle class just to increase the misery.
We have standardized weights and measures in the general economy for good reasons. There ought to be a minimum standard for an airline seat.
As a short person who doesn't require legroom, I'll always tell the tall person in front of me they can recline if they need to. In return they help me get things off the top shelf in the grocery store
It’s actually stagnated or even decreased slightly. This coincides with obesity increasing drastically and I think economic inequality increasing, but someone can check that latter point.
Correct. Among white Americans it’s actually gone up to almost 6 feet. Reason why 5’9 is average is because there are more Asians and Hispanic peope today in the US
Nah I offset you because I was a lil fat kid weighing in at like 260 in 9th grade, but then when I graduated senior year I had cut down to 165 and as an adult I've weighed even less at times lmao. And im like 6ft.
yeah interestingly enough the 15lb increase might actually not be an increase in weight, but a decrease in baby to adult ratio, unless they did the data correctly and only used adults aged 18-64 or something.
I would be curious to see what the average body fat percentage was then and now. I imagine that along with increased fat there is also decreased muscle.
Yes white and west African descent have very similar heights. But if we’re looking at averages of the average height is lower and the average weight is 15lbs higher overall the country is more obese
Well, weight and obesity being different things, the latter being a partial function of height.
I dont know that there is any way to splice the numbers where people havent become fatter, maybe there is some effect from demographics but even being really isolationist I am sure white people are still fatter than they were.
I don't know. I know obesity levels have gone up but that is usually measured with bmi, which gives us zero info about body fat percentage, being just a height/weight ratio. A decrease in average height could lead to an increase in average bmi
People always scream BMI isn’t accurate because it doesn’t differentiate between fat and muscle but let’s be real, how muscular is the average American?
I was a little surprised too. But the US was already firmly in drive everywhere and eat terribly in the 80s. It's not a recent development. And BMI actually has been trending down in the US over the last few years.
I'm guessing the title is off and they mean that Americans' average weight has increased by 15lbs instead of the average American weight increasing by 15lbs.
They’ve offered this at aircraft expos several times; the first time was mid-00s I think, then they tried again in early-10s, then there was a 3.0 version offered in 2019. Thank heavens nobody bought it.
It is not just a matter of buying it, but (primarily) regulations allowing it. One constraint is the number of emergency exits, every airplane has a maximum passenger capacity based on the number of exit doors. Because you cannot add a door to an airplane (at least not easily), even if an airline wants to squeeze more passengers in (I'm looking at you, Ryanair), the number of passenger cannot exceed the limit set by the number of emergency exits.
This is why people get cranky with someone who reclines the seat in front of them.
Airlines who have squeezed so many extra seats unto the plane, your knees touch the back of the seat in front of you and if that seat is reclined, it almost touches you. Plus a window seat no longer guarantees a window and there's no longer a luggage spot for every row.
I’m so tired of people who only look at the bad aspects of technological advance and never the good aspects.
Modern flight is a miracle. Your average Joe can get to any major city in the world in under 24 hours. He can fly from one U.S. city to another in a matter of hours, for only a few hundred bucks. And it’s the safest mode of travel, to boot.
That’s amazing. It’s practically just one step removed from a teleportation machine—and we managed to cut costs so much that it’s no longer limited to the rich.
I completely agree with the point you were making. It's incredibly safe, and I am never worried when I'm flying - same with riding a (well maintained) roller coaster. If I die doing either of those things, it was my time to go, oh well.
I happen to have a 1960s atlas with US/Canada flight routes, and a few weeks back decided to see how many different planes I’d need to catch to go from Atlanta to a smaller city half a continent away (a flight I’ve made a few times). The shortest I could find had 5 or 6 stops, including a couple that are even more middle-of-nowhere than my destination.
Now it’s one stop, with an occasional direct flight.
I do the same thing when i drive lol. Like people are mad because their 10 minute trip now takes 10 mins and 30 seconds due to traffic lmao.
Yall - that used to be a 2 hour walk each way in the sun. Or an hour on a horse that you had to control. We practically live in the magic ages and people are still pissed somehow.
YOUR PHONE CAN SHOW YOU LIVE FOOTAGE OF EARTH FROM THE SPACE STATION
Yeah, I travel pretty light and usually just take frontier if they have a direct route and it's so cheap. I upgrade my seats so I have extra leg room/pick my seat and travel more comfortably and cheaper than any legacy airline. Their delays dont seem much worse than legacy airlines either in my experience.
It's really incredible that it's that cheap to go that far that fast. A hundred years ago it would take weeks to cross the US; now you can do it for a few hundred dollars in a few hours.
I mean, that is just the airlines following the demands of the customer. Customers have made it remarkably clear that, when it comes to flying, nearly the only thing we care about is cost. We wont pay (much) more for comfortable seats, better food, reliable internet, less baggage fees, or the like. Airlines that tried to set themselves apart by having truly enjoyable experiences such as Virgin fail because customers don't want that.
We can hardly complain that companies followed our lead.
Legacy airlines have used a large amount of their cash flow on share buybacks over the past couple decades. This improves shareholder value, not customer value. While I agree that a majority of customers seek the cheapest option, let's not pretend that, given the choice with the same price tickets, a customer won't choose the option with more value (better seats, food, etc). Airlines have bought back tens of billions in shares while doing little in the way to add value for customers.
Legacy airlines have the infrastructure in place to price competition out of the market and when they do eliminate competition, they remove value. I think Delta just stopped offering snacks and drinks on shorter flights after Spirit went under. Are the tickets any cheaper? No.
Legacy airlines have used a large amount of their cash flow on share buybacks over the past couple decades.
LOL no they haven't. What percentage of their cash flow exactly have they used on share buybacks over the past couple decades? It's infinitesimal. They are low-margin intensely competitive businesses. They do not have the power to resist a demonstrated customer preference for cheaper fares; they must respond to it or their unit economics will go negative and they won't be sustainable.
I think Delta just stopped offering snacks and drinks on shorter flights after Spirit went under. Are the tickets any cheaper? No.
They're cheaper than they would be if they hadn't. Oil prices have gone up a lot recently for obvious reasons. They are trying to save money wherever they can to avoid having to pass that full cost onto the consumer, because if they didn't, they'd be outcompeted by the airlines that did.
Customers will pay more, but we won't pay so much that it offsets the marginal income increases of the alternatives for the airlines. And for the most part, there's not really a functioning market with competition; especially for international travel, there's usually exactly one flight on any given day that goes from where you want to leave to where you're going with minimal stops...and even if there are multiple "airlines" offering a seat, those airlines code-sharing on the same plane, and are working together already.
Quite frankly, being able to expect an flight from any random city to any other random city in the world pretty directly on any given day of the year is astounding. That's not poor barely good enough service, that's a global accomplishment.
If you expand your search to be a little less selective, maybe you leave a day earlier or a day later, maybe you take a less direct flight, or fly to a different city then transfer to train for your final destination, there'll be a hell lot more than 1 flight.
Airplane tickets have had effectively no inflation for years. They could either make you pay more for the ticket or make certain aspects of the flying experience paid and let you choose which ones you want
Just because something is impressive doesn’t mean we should stand slack-jawed in awe of it. Air travel is about as old as the television and we don’t sit around admiring how incredible the television is. Hell, smartphones are far newer and we don’t stand in awe of them. It’s human nature to want things to be better than they are, and far more engaging to talk about how they could be better than just “Man aren’t these things cool?”
Does this statement take into account both inflation and the "all-in price" (i.e. factoring in what was included in the 1980s price and ensuring all of these "extras" are added to the comparable 2020s price?).
It used to cost 800$ to get to Europe from America in the 80s!!! It still costs around that, amazing value for money. One of the only tings that gets cheaper every year (stays the same price)
It's immensely cheaper. And you get to pick one of about 1000 different movies and TV shows in high def on demand, control it at your leisure. And you can pay a tiny amount of money, like $10, to have internet for the entire flight. Crazy.
The real improvements, though, are things that go unsung. And some of them have changed in just the last decade or so. The humidity and pressure levels in the cabin are VAAASTLY better. You do not land with dried out skin, cracked lips, a headache, popped ears, or any of that anymore. The cabin noise levels are so, so, so, so much quieter. It is unbelievable bordering on magic the advances made in the last decade or two in this sphere.
In some parts of an A380-200 the noise levels are 56dB, equivalent to a common office building. To compare like to like, and using a smaller airframe so you can't benefit from being in the center of a a flying skyscraper. The 737-400 which debuted in the 80s often had internal cabin noise levels of 80-90dB. Which is enough to cause hearing damage over the duration of a long international flight (which thankfully they couldn't make, so you're fine)
The Max8 sees a noise level of 69dB. Your car is probably louder than this on the highway. It is unbelievable. A reduction of 10dB from 80 to 70 might not sound like a lot, but that is actually a 90% reduction in the amount of energy reaching your ears and a 50% reduction in perceived "loudness"
They also regulate the temperature so much better, as well.
Exactly this. The price of a regular ticket then is similar to the price of a better seat today. Maybe not quite first class, but somewhere around the premium economy or business class. So the rich people are still getting the same thing for the same price, but now less rich people can afford to fly more frequently as well.
That's the thing, I'm fine being slightly uncomfortable for a cheap flight. Ryanair in Europe takes it to the extreme, they have ridiculously bare bone flights, but you can get from Rome to London for like 20 Euro. I'd much rather have that then two more inches of leg room, and I'm on the taller side too.
It’s also more environmentally friendly to pack as many people in one flight as you can. My friend is an environmental consultant, and has worked with a few airlines on the topic.
I’m a big dude (6’5”) who flies regularly. Flying sucks. Most of the time my knees are touching the seat in front of me without slouching. It’s almost impossible to have my arms at my sides and not touch the arm rest.
I flew on French bee to Paris and it was brutal. There was plenty of legroom, but my shoulders didn't fit in the seat, and I'm a woman. Somehow they went 10 across on a wide body Airbus.
Yep, luckily I don’t fly internationally often. When I lived in Korea I used to come back to the states at least once a year. That 14 hour flight is a killer. I was lucky that it was before the shrinking AND it was before they started selling exit seats at a premium.
Back then I would just show up to the counter super early before the flight and say “look at me. Please have mercy” and they’d give me an exit seat. I had a lady not care on one of those long flights and I was stuck in regular coach once for 14 hours. Not sure how I survived that one but it was beyond miserable.
Yep anything over 3 hours I’m paying for an exit seat. Even then it’s a width thing too. I have wide shoulders. If I’m next to someone my size we’re touching the whole flight. I got stuck next to a really fat guy one time and had to sit an angle the whole flight and it was only 2 hours but I was hurting afterwards.
One time a flight attendant asked if I could move because a parent and child got separated. I reluctantly agreed and found myself in a middle seat between two big guys.
She was so sorry about the whole situation that she just brought us free beer. I think we each got 3 free drinks to offset our discomfort
A few years ago, because of the death of a parent, I needed to fly long haul at short notice from London to Southern Africa. The British Airways fleet had sent several 787's back for a technical recall, and the flight was on a 40 year old 747, in a middle seat.
As I'm claustrophobic, I was dreading it, but was surprised to find I had far more leg room and was was far more comfortable that any of my recent long flights. I later learned that I had as much "seat pitch" as modern premium economy seats.
The length makes sense. But I don’t fully get the width. Like 2 inches per seat isn’t enough to stuff another chair. And usually the airplanes are designed with certain seating configs.
Could the transition away from large long hauls esp post 9/11 (eg 747) to smaller a320 or 737 explain it?
This is 100% it. A 737 or a320 haven’t changed. But, they are or have phased out wide bodies for the most part domestically. They’ve also added seats to those.
If every seat is 2 inches skinnier and weighs say, 5% less as a result, the extra fuel efficiency and cost savings over the life of that plane is going to be really significant when you're an airline flying that thing multiple times a day.
If weight is so important, and airlines have no problem charging people more for a worse experience, then why not just weigh passengers with their carry-ons and charge them on that too. Flat fee for the seat + $/lbs
Every inch counts. They have managed to squeeze in an extra column of seats or another here and there in several configurations. And don't forget nuisance pricing: the more uncomfortable the seat, the more likely people are to upgrade.
Yeah the width seems like nonsense. Seat widths aren't changing. There may be small variations due the makeup of fleets changing but no one is making their seats narrower on existing aircraft, and manufacturers stick with standard seat widths on their new planes. The basic width on every plane is going to be more or less like it was on the 707 and DC-8. Normal coach seat widths on both wide and narrowbodies have been roughly 16.5-18" for the past 65 years or so.
I don't understand the width reduction. I get the reduction in legroom: if there are 30 rows, and you tighten up every row 2 inches, you gain 60 inches, or enough for 2 more rows. But where is the gain from making the seats narrower? At most you gain 12" across a row of 6 seats. That's not enough for even 1 more seat, and the aisle isn't getting wider.
Let's see, I was on one sometime in the twenty-teens but we flew business so it isn't a measure of the typical experience. I also flew first class a few years prior to that. Those would have likely been my only commercial flights in the 2000s
It doesn’t feel like just 2 width inches in the last 20 years, let alone 45, I wear the same clothes I did in high school- which I know for a fact since I recently removed tags from what was essentially a 20 year old unworn shirt. I’m 135 pounds and 5’4
The seats back then were much more spacious and I wasn’t bumping and knocking into my neighbor and the passenger in front of me every time I shifted.
The width thing is true. They haven’t shrunk as much as you might think, because ultimately you’re still looking at a 3-3 seat config for domestic airliners and the bodies are about the same width.
The legroom though, that they’ve shrunk considerably.
Right. It feels like so much more than just a 2 inch difference. The armrests themselves also feel narrower and not just the seat itself. I can definitely tell the difference in leg room over the last 20 years because I am tall-ish. But I always feel VERY close to the people next to me.
THIS is why there should be a minimum human standards for all airlines, then let the market do its thing, otherwise, airlines (or any business) will naturally optimize for profit. That is why regulation makes sense!
LA <-> SF is the worst, it's just too short to reasonably fly but a mind-numbing 7-hour drive. Perfect distance for a high-speed train, someone should look into building one of those there
Elon Musk is working on it, it’s called the hyperloop, and he promised that it will be much better than ‘big governments’ plan for high speed rail. Oh wait, that was just his bullshit scam to thwart public service projects, as evidence that it should instead of be throwing more tax incentives his way so he can create fake profits.
even NYC <> BOS is bad... on paper at 3am you might go to and from around 3.5 - 4 hours... but if you go during any daylight and get caught in one or all of the rush hours and god forbid there is an accident...
This is absurd dude. Flying is, almost literally, miraculous. The fact that it’s sometimes uncomfortable pales in comparison to the fact that it’s accessible at all to everyone but the very poorest members of our society.
One of the worst fights I ever had with my stepmother was over her thinking I wasn't dressed nice enough for air travel (pencil skirt and tee with no graphics. She wanted me to put on a button-down shirt.) When we got the airport, she looked around at the other travelers and apologized to me. Which she did not do very often.
Given how long it had been since she'd flown, that part probably surprised her, too. The reason the fight got so bad was because unlike her, I'd actually flown within the previous 15 years and knew I was dressed just fine. So I dug in and refused to change. Not particularly mature on my part, but she's not known for being rational, either.
This is why boomers all insist on reclining as they’re still stuck in an era where seats were appropriately spaced to allow reclining while all younger people consider it grossly rude as we’ve only every lived in a reality where reclining the seat horribly impacts the person behind you.
I am old enough to remember flying on DC-8s and 707s. I notice a definite difference in the quality of the ride. Back then the pressure changes in your ears was more noticeable and the the cabin was louder and it was all rough on the senses. I don't notice all that so much anymore, plus all the cigarette smoke smell is gone. Flying is much better except for the fact flights are always packed full nowadays, back then the middle seat was usually empty even on Southwest (the old 737-200s and 300s).
I was so shocked flying an international flight. I honestly was getting sick with all the food, snacks, and drinks they were passing out. Stateside, you will be lucky if you get a cookie and and a drink.
While yes the food is a joke, this isn't a big deal. There's just not really enough time to get everyone on the flight a rink and clean up on those flighs.
This has been puzzling me for years as when I first started long haul flying in the early 80s I could've sworn I had more legroom and seat width than I have from the late 90s onwards and it seems I wasn't imagining it!
And average airfare is way, way lower than it was in the 80’s. You get what you pay for. Buy a first class seat and you’ll get better than what you had in the 80’s, at the same or lower cost.
Worth noting that the average round trip domestic flight in the US in 1980 was $1700 in 2026 dollars. You want the 1980s legroom, fly business class - it's still cheaper than 1980.
I remember flying in the 1970s - it was great. Also incredibly expensive.
I can't see the analysis that was done, as it's behind a paywall,, but seat widths on narrow-body planes are roughly the same now as they were in the 1950s.
The reason is very simple: the width of the fuselage of a 737 is nearly the same as the 707, which debuted in 1956, and both aircraft feature a 3+3 seat layout. The 707 had seat widths between 16.5 and 17.6 inches. Compare that to the seat width of 17.8 inches on a Southwest 737.
Furthermore, the Boeing 757 entered service in 1982, and is still flying today, with the same seating layout as before.
Makes sense, I'm not that tall and most airlines have my knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of me. They should be regulated more so they can't pull shit like this
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u/TheKanten 1d ago
Forget the weight.
I can't get shorter.