My discomfort increases with time in the air. 2-3 hour flight, I can take lots of discomfort. Long haul there is no-where and nothing you can do but get lucky with an exit seat or pay up for first class. There is only so much wriggling you can do.
People are only getting taller, but leg room is deceasing.
My hope would be to see regulation require more leg room for long haul routes.
The point is that it's a safety issue. Regulation seems like a good way to deal with this, although I expect there will be heavy pushback from the aviation industry.
With 3 million flights a year in the US, there's no way the cost is possibly justified by any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
> Nobody died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world in 2016...it is the seventh straight year that nobody died in a crash on a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world.
There isn't nearly enough real-crash data for something as specific as seat widths, but the FAA gets lots of info about this stuff by simulating evacuation procedures with real people.
All the more reason to do research into making sure there isn't a safety issue here. Stats like this just make people and companies complacent until the next tragedy strikes.
Research isn't free. It's very possible an order of magnitude estimate would show that the risks of seat narrowing couldn't possibly outweigh the benefits.
It also makes it hard for people like me who are far above the average height to even fit in a seat. If I'm forced to travel for work, I have to either be very uncomfortable or pay out of my pocket because the company doesn't want to pay for first class. My knees dig into that little metal rod the seat back pouches have or they go into the armrest in front of me, it's absurd how small cabins are now.
The point stands. Do they spend more the next time for a chance of having a less miserable experience or do they fly again with the less expensive AwfulAir?
Ah! I completely misunderstood what you were saying, sorry. (But I don't really agree... Not all companies are equally awful. Most of us just want to pay less.)
I'm generally all for government regulations, especially when the market is such that true competition isn't really possible, but here I have to entirely blame the consumer.
There are more than sufficient airlines on major routes for competition (and you can see this when they get into fare sales for stuff like LAX-ORD for $50). Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service.
I especially have to scoff at tech workers, who don't lack the money to make their travel experience more pleasant, but still take redeyes to save money and then complain about how much they hate travelling.
I feel like the people who are fighting for regulations on seat sizes don't understand that those regulations will cause ticket prices to go up. If you're fine with paying extra for a bigger seat, that's cool, but you can also already do that today (Economy Plus or First) without any political fighting. All you'll be doing is removing access to flying for the poorest people.
As for the safety issue, I'm no expert and I haven't seen the original complaint, but the FAA already has a regulation about the maximum time it can take to evacuate a plane (and therefore a limit on the number of seats per door on the plane, effectively). This hits the airlines with no first class cabin hardest, as they actually can't pack the entire 737 full of their standard economy seat.
> but you can also already do that today (Economy Plus or First)
True, but there is generally a big increase in price. Premium Economy is generally twice the price of Economy. Regulations to push up the Economy seat pitch to a safe level would increase prices for Economy tickets, but given the small size difference, the price increase should be rather modest.
I wonder if you're conflating non-US carriers' Premium Economy (usually about the same size as US domestic First Class) with US carriers' "Economy plus" or similar (which is basically 4ish inches more of pitch than Economy at the same width). You can generally get the latter for a transcontinental US flight for about $200ish extra.
> Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service.
Virgin is quite good; Southwest is terrible. They're known for cost, not for service. Their lack of assigned seating is one of many manifestations of that, and it's the primary reason I never fly Southwest.
I don't fly Southwest because their website is broken for what seems to be the entire Netherlands for over a year. Multiple tweets, contacts to tech emails and it still serves up an Akamai 403.
Many think of Southwest as in the same league as Frontier and Spirit, in fact. It’s a budget airline which happens to resonate with some non-budget-minded flyers, proving that you can make a budget airline half decent more than anything.
In my experience, if you don't travel enough to have status, Southwest is one of the better companies for not being treated like a pleb and getting nickel and dimed at every turn. Furthermore, many people find no assigned seats to be a plus.
Yea I'd normally fly Alaska, but if I can't it's always Southwest. They are very good and the seats are comfortable. The value of assigned seats is fairly negligible to me.
I almost agree, but IME it's not that easy to visualize the price/seat-size tradeoff in comparison shopping. Is 28 inches a lot for that dimension? Without seeing the rest of the seat, it's hard to be sure. Plus, I don't know how abusive someone is going to be about reclining the seat in front of me.
May be the first step of regulation should be requiring some standard disclosures around seat sizes, etc. If kayak or some other comparison engine showed that you would are getting 2 extra inches for the $40 more when flying Virgin instead of Frontier (hypothetical example), more people would pick Virgin.
How available is knowledge if nobody knows they can attain it? This is the first I've heard of seatguru, and given the post you responded to, I'd hazard I'm not the only one.
Have you ever tried to search online for information about quality of seating in airplanes? In that case, I'm surprised you didn't cross seatguru before.
You can go really deep down the rabbit hole of seat knowledge with Seatguru, but it's quite time consuming. Their flight search is reasonable, and probably many people who care about seats do use them. But the majority probably does not even suspect that there are major differences in seat sizes between airlines and even planes. So having that information more visible across the board would change incentives more. I also suspect given how many booking sites make money they would be dis-incentivized to do this on their own.
I think airline travel provides one of the clearest examples of the big different between what people say they want (legroom, good quality food, friendly service), and what they will actually want / will pay for (cheap seats).
Let's not forget, premium economy, business class, first class, private jets are all available in this market for people that actually want large and comfortable seats and are willing to pay more for it.
The caveat is that upgrades aren't proportional. On a $200 round trip flight, a tiny bit more legroom might cost $150 each way. It's sometimes cheaper to buy two seats!
I'm not sure that the option to buy marginal comfort really exists. The higher fare classes that would deliver it are intended (and priced) for totally non-price-sensitive entities like business travelers.
>There are more than sufficient airlines on major routes for competition (and you can see this when they get into fare sales for stuff like LAX-ORD for $50).
Wait, so because occasionally there are routes with excess capacity this means there is sufficient competition? You seem to have confused the concept of demand competition for some reason. They are orthogonal although related concepts. Airlines having "fire sales" on fares is also not very common. Airlines have adopted a practice called "capacity discipline" which is industry speak for limiting both the number of seats and flights to a destination so as to increase the ticket price[1].
Also it doesn't seem like you are at all aware of the amount of consolidation that has gone on in the industry in the last decade, four major airlines control 80% of the market[2]. Is that your idea of sufficient competition? And there are also many instance where one or more of those 4 don't actually have a direct flight option to your particular destination.
>"Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service."
What a bunch of nonsense straw man BS this claim is - because there is a segment of the market that selects predominantly on price means that all consumers don't care? That is beyond absurd.
>"I especially have to scoff at tech workers, who don't lack the money to make their travel experience more pleasant, but still take redeyes to save money and then complain about how much they hate travelling."
Most people I know take red eyes when there is no other choice, examples are an interview or late meeting on the opposite coast. It's also really odd that you believe that everyone who is a "tech worker" is by definition well off financially. There is no shortage of "tech workers" who are between jobs, starting a company and don't yet have income, free lancers, recent grads with student loan debt etc. Odder still is that fact that you have made blanket assumption about people based on their industry and then have chosen to "scoff" at them based on own your own ridiculous assumption.
I'm generally against most government regulations, especially in free markets, but I'm fine with the FAA making evacuation regs stricter to force airlines to go back to more leg room.
I once got a free "upgrade" to economy plus. They seated me at a bulkhead and (because no under-seat space) required my carry-on go in the bins where I couldn't see whether my company laptop was being stolen.
If instead I could get elbow room and still have something to read, that might be worthwhile.
I don't necessarily blame the consumer, per se, but I don't think regulations on seating beyond safety are entirely necessary either.
I'm 6'4" and 280lbs- I'd like more length AND width so I pony up the extra $80-150 for whatever version of the economy plus exists on that carrier. I've also found that certain carrier's regular ol' economy are just fine. Delta, Southwest and Alaska routes with the newer generation of plane cabins fit me perfectly adequately. My knees are right up to the seat back in front of me but not IN the seat back in front of me.
I don't bargain shop for my flights at all beside sanity checking the route prices. I'll pretty much do anything to avoid connections, and I refuse to fly United or any budget airline besides Southwest, regardless of price.
I use Alaska as much as possible (live on the west coast), and Delta when I'm going to the east coast or to Europe (they partner with KLM).
I've got status on both so I get all kinds of perks, and the service on Alaska, Delta, and Southwest are about as good as you're going to get in the US (at least once you get some status).
I'll reluctantly fly American if they're the only suitable option for my schedule or are insanely cheaper, but I find that my three first choices generally cover the day sufficiently enough to make it work.
I'm not fond of the SWA cattle call, but I've found their seats to be decently sized, their staff to be human and helpful within their power, and their focus on not nickel and diming is a breathe of fresh air.
"Regulation" doesn't have to mean dictating seat size or spacing (though I think there probably should be some minimums), it can also mean requiring good labeling, making it clear to the consumer, at the time they need the information, what exactly they get for what they're paying. I think existing regulations can already be thanked for the information you get about baggage (what's included, what costs extra).
Given the choice, consumers would also buy cars without seatbelts of airbags simply because those new cars would cost $700... however, we as a society, have fortunately or unfortunately decided that people shouldn't be given the option to risk their lives in order to save money.
Smoking in public places was banned because it's annoying/unpleasant for a lot of people. But they didn't just say that, they called it a safety issue.
This is the same thing. People are uncofortable, and they want to frame it as a safety issue.
> Smoking in public places was banned because it's annoying/unpleasant for a lot of people. But they didn't just say that, they called it a safety issue
Eh... no. Yes, smoking was annoying and unpleasant for a lot of people, but 2nd hand smoke is absolutely a safety issue.
Yea i think that is a large part of the problem, a kind of variation of the principle agent problem. Either your company forces you to take the cheapest option, so you cannot take into account legroom, or your company doesn't care, and you don't either since it isn't your money, so the airlines can charge ridiculous markups for extra legroom.
Google seems to have a good intermediate policy where you can keep money you save on one trip and use it for upgrades on future travel.
I would really like to see a study of the economics of the smaller legroom.
My napkin math tells me if you remove two rows of seats from an all-economy 737, every remaining seat would get an extra 2.5-3 inches of legroom, which is significant.
I wonder how much revenue would this change cost to a major airline.
Seems easy enough to work out with further napkin maths - such planes usually have 24 rows or so, so 2 rows is almost 10% of the capacity / revenue lost (or, at least, you'd need to be getting 10% more for your remaining seats to break even).
Or, in absolute terms - 2 rows = 12 seats, so if you imagine $100 fares, with a few flights per day, you could easily be looking at 5 or 10 thousand dollars a plane per day.
Sure, but it's the main case worth thinking about, because from the airline's perspective, when the plane is 100% utilized the fares are highest so that's when the extra 2 rows make the biggest difference. From the customer's perspective, nobody cares about small seats if the seat next to you is empty anyway.
It might be possible to adapt the layout based on utilization. Fold the first rows and move every rows forward a bit. Doing this while minimizing the weight and complying with regulations is seems challenging though.
2 rows is how many seats? What are the ~total number of seats? If the price were X, how much would the price have to increase if 2 rows we're removed?
p.s. less passengers also means less fuel, less employees (to some extent), etc. That said, the number of flights, especially on certain routes, has to be limited. At that point the only way up and out is to maximize bodies on the plane. Ya can't add more flights.
It isn't just the seats. Every time I see I'm going to be on an Embraer I cringe because I can't even stand up in those. If I ever meet the person responsible for that I will have some strong words for him/her.
I don't think there is any attempt to reduce width on narrow body planes, on them seat width is basically determined by cabin width. 17 inches means you are on a Boeing 737 derivant, 18 inches means you are on a Airbus A318/319/320 derivant. The decline in average width probably means a higher percentage of 737 flights. That increase could be driven by retirement of older planes such as MD-80s that had an 18 inch seat width.
It is enough - on 777 in economy class, you can do 9 abreast (the typical option, 3 + 3 + 3), or 10 abreast (3 + 4 + 3), which airlines are starting to do now.
I'm 6", not overweight, and from Europe: seat width and pitch is a big issue for me. Economy seat width is typically an uncomfortable 17-18 inches, and pitch typically a painful 31".
I have to fly long haul in economy with work (who won't pay for anything else), so my choice is either several hours of pain and discomfort, or to pay a large sum to upgrade myself - if the fare is even upgradable. Bring on the regulation!
While the overweight-passenger issue is a real thing, in this case the seat pitch affects people who are taller. 28" (711mm) seat pitch (which includes the thickness of the seat), doesn't leave much room if your femur is longer than that. So all the Dutch and Scandinavian fliers would really suffer on a 4+ hour flight.
Regulations can be used appropriately to stop a race to the bottom, and I think airline seats are a good example.
When credit card companies started tweaking terms and conditions to make their cards more and more hostile to consumers, it's hard to be the company that still offers the "right" terms (e.g. Payments above the minimum apply to the highest interest balances first) when most consumers don't even understand what I just wrote.
Similar with airline shopping, seat pitch just isn't visible enough, and even if it was right there next to the price, do most shoppers understand what 28" pitch really means?
A perfectly functioning free market relies on perfect information available to the consumer. Today, we get a price and (usually) a brand name and that's about it. So competition is almost entirely on price.
In cases like these, it benefits everyone to make some regulations setting reasonable ground rules. Freeing airlines from having to compete against 28" seat pitch is like freeing credit card companies from having to compete against predatory terms and conditions.
Yes of course this has an impact on the bottom line. It would marginally increase the cost of tickets the same way the CARD Act made it less profitable to issue cards to certain people, and the same way airbags make cars more expensive.
There are other practices I disdain, like charging extra for a seat assignment or a boarding pass, but those are more visible when buying the ticket and I can more easily avoid it.
I do think if we could get much better and clear labeling on the differences between available seats (pitch, width, recline, power, screen, entertainment, food) it would help a lot. But airline shopping is already very painful, data overload is a real problem.
If the problem is that the data is there but people don't understand it, then you'd see consumers flying a shitty budget airline like Spirit once and then going back to another airline. People will regularly come back to these budget airlines. I really do think that consumers' revealed preferences are just not what most people think they should be.
I can tell you for me, that's exactly what happened. I flew Spirit exactly once. I couldn't stop telling people how horric it was for weeks and absolutely I would never even consider flying with them again.
If we regulated everything consumers didn't understand there wouldn't be much left, eh? :)
At some point, ya gotta have a reasonable amount of faith and let'em learn to fish. There are, of course, exceptions. Safety comes to mind.
Also, if the government has to spend time and energy poking into the minor and the minutiae there won't be anything left for the big real problems that actually require gov intervention. Is that not what we see today? A gov too often bogged down in bullshit. We debated the size of gov when we should focus on role and quality. Geez. We can't even get the scope of the discussion correct.
Gov, like so many things, is a limited resource. We should use it sparingly and wisely. My personal sense is that is not the case. We throw it at everything. Even though it isn't working out well :(
Air travel has become a commodity. Not that it has to be, but most of the airlines approach it that way. Therefore, and the market parrots this, price is the driving force. "Race to the bottom" comes to mind.
Simultaneously, most Westerns consider air travel a right. It's not a proper holiday unless a plane is involved. I'd be curious to know how much air travel is necessary, and how much is simply a choice. I suspect it's the ladder, though the market certainly acts like it's the former.
Long to short, if it we're THAT bad (over a 3+ hr flight), less people would fly. That's not the case, is it?
p.s. I think when you factor in body size, the seats are even more proportionally small. But that too is often a choice. Moral of the story? Human make bad choices. Not to worry i'll refrain from making a comment about politics :)
It's strange how Americans can complain about how enthusiastically they give up their rights and safety to corporations.
I guarantee you that if a bill was introduced to enforce humane conditions on airline flights, it would be shot down for being communist anti-business government overreach. The same people who complain about inhumane conditions are often the same ones who perpetuate them.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadPeople are only getting taller, but leg room is deceasing.
My hope would be to see regulation require more leg room for long haul routes.
I hope that was an intentional pun. Leg room is vanishingly small these days, but I'm not so sure it's entirely gone. ;)
That doesn't mean that it is a safety issue.
> Nobody died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world in 2016...it is the seventh straight year that nobody died in a crash on a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/12/28/in-the-la...
Also, evacuation after a crash is not the only safety issue - there is deep vein thrombosis, for example.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
There are more than sufficient airlines on major routes for competition (and you can see this when they get into fare sales for stuff like LAX-ORD for $50). Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service.
I especially have to scoff at tech workers, who don't lack the money to make their travel experience more pleasant, but still take redeyes to save money and then complain about how much they hate travelling.
I feel like the people who are fighting for regulations on seat sizes don't understand that those regulations will cause ticket prices to go up. If you're fine with paying extra for a bigger seat, that's cool, but you can also already do that today (Economy Plus or First) without any political fighting. All you'll be doing is removing access to flying for the poorest people.
As for the safety issue, I'm no expert and I haven't seen the original complaint, but the FAA already has a regulation about the maximum time it can take to evacuate a plane (and therefore a limit on the number of seats per door on the plane, effectively). This hits the airlines with no first class cabin hardest, as they actually can't pack the entire 737 full of their standard economy seat.
True, but there is generally a big increase in price. Premium Economy is generally twice the price of Economy. Regulations to push up the Economy seat pitch to a safe level would increase prices for Economy tickets, but given the small size difference, the price increase should be rather modest.
Virgin is quite good; Southwest is terrible. They're known for cost, not for service. Their lack of assigned seating is one of many manifestations of that, and it's the primary reason I never fly Southwest.
disclaimer: I work at google but not related to the flights team.
I think airline travel provides one of the clearest examples of the big different between what people say they want (legroom, good quality food, friendly service), and what they will actually want / will pay for (cheap seats).
Let's not forget, premium economy, business class, first class, private jets are all available in this market for people that actually want large and comfortable seats and are willing to pay more for it.
I'm not sure that the option to buy marginal comfort really exists. The higher fare classes that would deliver it are intended (and priced) for totally non-price-sensitive entities like business travelers.
Wait, so because occasionally there are routes with excess capacity this means there is sufficient competition? You seem to have confused the concept of demand competition for some reason. They are orthogonal although related concepts. Airlines having "fire sales" on fares is also not very common. Airlines have adopted a practice called "capacity discipline" which is industry speak for limiting both the number of seats and flights to a destination so as to increase the ticket price[1].
Also it doesn't seem like you are at all aware of the amount of consolidation that has gone on in the industry in the last decade, four major airlines control 80% of the market[2]. Is that your idea of sufficient competition? And there are also many instance where one or more of those 4 don't actually have a direct flight option to your particular destination.
>"Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service."
What a bunch of nonsense straw man BS this claim is - because there is a segment of the market that selects predominantly on price means that all consumers don't care? That is beyond absurd.
>"I especially have to scoff at tech workers, who don't lack the money to make their travel experience more pleasant, but still take redeyes to save money and then complain about how much they hate travelling."
Most people I know take red eyes when there is no other choice, examples are an interview or late meeting on the opposite coast. It's also really odd that you believe that everyone who is a "tech worker" is by definition well off financially. There is no shortage of "tech workers" who are between jobs, starting a company and don't yet have income, free lancers, recent grads with student loan debt etc. Odder still is that fact that you have made blanket assumption about people based on their industry and then have chosen to "scoff" at them based on own your own ridiculous assumption.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/business/airline-discipli...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/energy-environme...
If instead I could get elbow room and still have something to read, that might be worthwhile.
I'm 6'4" and 280lbs- I'd like more length AND width so I pony up the extra $80-150 for whatever version of the economy plus exists on that carrier. I've also found that certain carrier's regular ol' economy are just fine. Delta, Southwest and Alaska routes with the newer generation of plane cabins fit me perfectly adequately. My knees are right up to the seat back in front of me but not IN the seat back in front of me.
I don't bargain shop for my flights at all beside sanity checking the route prices. I'll pretty much do anything to avoid connections, and I refuse to fly United or any budget airline besides Southwest, regardless of price.
I use Alaska as much as possible (live on the west coast), and Delta when I'm going to the east coast or to Europe (they partner with KLM).
I've got status on both so I get all kinds of perks, and the service on Alaska, Delta, and Southwest are about as good as you're going to get in the US (at least once you get some status).
I'll reluctantly fly American if they're the only suitable option for my schedule or are insanely cheaper, but I find that my three first choices generally cover the day sufficiently enough to make it work.
I'm not fond of the SWA cattle call, but I've found their seats to be decently sized, their staff to be human and helpful within their power, and their focus on not nickel and diming is a breathe of fresh air.
This is the same thing. People are uncofortable, and they want to frame it as a safety issue.
Eh... no. Yes, smoking was annoying and unpleasant for a lot of people, but 2nd hand smoke is absolutely a safety issue.
Tons of things are safety issues that get little attention. Second-habd smoke got tons of attention.
https://slate.janrainsso.com//static/server.html?origin=http...
Google seems to have a good intermediate policy where you can keep money you save on one trip and use it for upgrades on future travel.
My napkin math tells me if you remove two rows of seats from an all-economy 737, every remaining seat would get an extra 2.5-3 inches of legroom, which is significant.
I wonder how much revenue would this change cost to a major airline.
Or, in absolute terms - 2 rows = 12 seats, so if you imagine $100 fares, with a few flights per day, you could easily be looking at 5 or 10 thousand dollars a plane per day.
http://aviationdb.net/aviationdb/SeatUtilizationByCarrierQue...
p.s. less passengers also means less fuel, less employees (to some extent), etc. That said, the number of flights, especially on certain routes, has to be limited. At that point the only way up and out is to maximize bodies on the plane. Ya can't add more flights.
I have to fly long haul in economy with work (who won't pay for anything else), so my choice is either several hours of pain and discomfort, or to pay a large sum to upgrade myself - if the fare is even upgradable. Bring on the regulation!
When credit card companies started tweaking terms and conditions to make their cards more and more hostile to consumers, it's hard to be the company that still offers the "right" terms (e.g. Payments above the minimum apply to the highest interest balances first) when most consumers don't even understand what I just wrote.
Similar with airline shopping, seat pitch just isn't visible enough, and even if it was right there next to the price, do most shoppers understand what 28" pitch really means?
A perfectly functioning free market relies on perfect information available to the consumer. Today, we get a price and (usually) a brand name and that's about it. So competition is almost entirely on price.
In cases like these, it benefits everyone to make some regulations setting reasonable ground rules. Freeing airlines from having to compete against 28" seat pitch is like freeing credit card companies from having to compete against predatory terms and conditions.
Yes of course this has an impact on the bottom line. It would marginally increase the cost of tickets the same way the CARD Act made it less profitable to issue cards to certain people, and the same way airbags make cars more expensive.
There are other practices I disdain, like charging extra for a seat assignment or a boarding pass, but those are more visible when buying the ticket and I can more easily avoid it.
I do think if we could get much better and clear labeling on the differences between available seats (pitch, width, recline, power, screen, entertainment, food) it would help a lot. But airline shopping is already very painful, data overload is a real problem.
At some point, ya gotta have a reasonable amount of faith and let'em learn to fish. There are, of course, exceptions. Safety comes to mind.
Also, if the government has to spend time and energy poking into the minor and the minutiae there won't be anything left for the big real problems that actually require gov intervention. Is that not what we see today? A gov too often bogged down in bullshit. We debated the size of gov when we should focus on role and quality. Geez. We can't even get the scope of the discussion correct.
Gov, like so many things, is a limited resource. We should use it sparingly and wisely. My personal sense is that is not the case. We throw it at everything. Even though it isn't working out well :(
Simultaneously, most Westerns consider air travel a right. It's not a proper holiday unless a plane is involved. I'd be curious to know how much air travel is necessary, and how much is simply a choice. I suspect it's the ladder, though the market certainly acts like it's the former.
Long to short, if it we're THAT bad (over a 3+ hr flight), less people would fly. That's not the case, is it?
p.s. I think when you factor in body size, the seats are even more proportionally small. But that too is often a choice. Moral of the story? Human make bad choices. Not to worry i'll refrain from making a comment about politics :)
I guarantee you that if a bill was introduced to enforce humane conditions on airline flights, it would be shot down for being communist anti-business government overreach. The same people who complain about inhumane conditions are often the same ones who perpetuate them.