Bizarre, International, Society

Cattle Call: Airbus and Southwest Moves To Add Even More Seats To Coach

220px-Economy_Seat220px-Boeing_737-2A1_N25SW_Southwest_SAT_17.10.75_edited-2I have previously authored columns and blog entries criticizing the airline industry for its nosedive in customer services and accommodations. (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). The includes the planned switch to “bench seating” where passengers are expected to start bringing their own cushions. Despite the rising criticism of airlines making record profits while continuing to strip away every comfort, there is a new report that Southwest is now turning its back on passengers. The airline and Airbus are going to stuff another seat into coach class with new A380 superjumbo carriers.

The Airbus A380 currently seats 10 passengers in an economy row with a 3-4-3 configuration. The new layout would add an extra seat to the middle row, squeezing people into a 3-5-3 configuration. While the seats are expected to remain in the same width of 18 inches, those seats are already too small and the move will pump up the number of passengers from 525 passengers to 544 passengers. Once critic posted this picture:

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This is truly becoming absurd when you look at such pictures. What is clear is that the airlines have succeeded in changing the expectations of passengers where any comfort is extra as well as adding charges for basic elements of travel. I am in San Francisco this week and paid extra to get a couple inches more of legroom in coach so that my knees were not pressed against the seat in front of me and I could actually open my computer on an over five hour flight. I also sat through a United Airlines commercial on the flight that advertised how its credit card will save you money . . . by waiving the outrageous baggage charges that the airline has tacked on to your ticket. So, just to keep up, United imposes a huge baggage fee due to fuel costs. Yet, after fuel costs fell, they kept the charge and now use the threat of the charge to get you to use their credit card.

A recent report shows airlines plunging in passenger satisfaction and accommodations. However, it does not matter. There is clear coordination among the airlines in a rush to the bottom to reduce the expectations of passengers. Yet, while these companies get a host of legislative benefits and support, it remains a one way street. Industry lobbyists remain extremely powerful in Congress and have been adept at cutting off any serious effort to address the abusive treatment of passengers. I am not a fan of adding regulations but it would be good to see more aggressive investigation into coordination behavior and inflated price allegations.

Clearly, there will remain a growth in the cattle-car model of low-cost flying. However, there has to be more coverage and support for those airlines acting responsibly as we did recently on the difference in space and charges.

88 thoughts on “Cattle Call: Airbus and Southwest Moves To Add Even More Seats To Coach”

  1. Tell me how one can make a snap judgment about the inter familial relationship of a mother, child and grandma from a two minute video. People must have nothing better to do than make guesses and pass judgment on a family they don’t know.

  2. @PaulCS

    Oh, LOL! Well, are you ready for this???

    Flushed, With Success – Part Deux???
    An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm

    Little Susie, she waved as she flew,
    Past her grandmother there, on row two!
    Who had luckily gotten
    To sit at that spot in
    A window seat, with a good view!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  3. Grandma could not spank Little Sue,
    Who threw tantrums to go to the loo!
    But she locked Grandma out,
    And fell in, no doubt. . .
    Eight miles high, and sucked out with the poo!

    I guess she was just a bad egg. eh wot?

  4. Paul, you obviously don’t understand that you cannot make a snap judgment on strangers’ inter familial relationships based on a two minute video.

    And….yet….Inga makes just such a snap judgement on the person who made the video

    Don’t know and don’t care who GloZell is, she looks like a biatch

    And

    The lady in the video looks a bit insane with all the winking and grimacing

    Are you even self aware at ALL?????

  6. Well, this is what comes from not spanking kids. Sometimes this comes back to haunt the care givers, as in this morbid little moral tale in the form of an Irish Poem!

    Flushed, With Success???
    An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm

    Grandma could not spank Little Sue,
    Who threw tantrums to go to the loo!
    But she locked Grandma out,
    And fell in, no doubt. . .
    Eight miles high, and sucked out with the poo!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  7. Paul, you obviously don’t understand that you cannot make a snap judgment on strangers’ inter familial relationships based on a two minute video. You’re making the same mistake with both of your examples, but keep trying Paul, you’ll get it right yet.

    1. Inga – you can make snap judgments about peoples’ relationships based on a number of verbal and non-verbal clues. Two-minutes is plenty of time to make an educated guess.

      This is how you guess whether a child may or may not be in danger with the adult they are with and whether you should interfere. This is how teachers decide if a student is misbehaving or it is something they should let play out. This is how you can tell if a couple is attracted to each other or not.

  9. God usually does a good job deciding who should reproduce and who shouldn’t. Some people should not be parents.

  10. Observing and making an assessment on a wound is different than observing and assessing human behavior in a two minute time frame, Paul.

    1. Inga – cops take less than two minutes to assess a situation. What can you not get about this?

  11. bam bam, Great comment. Like I said, normal, observant folks can assess fairly quickly a situation and who is the problem.

  12. DBQ, Normal people can tell the parents who are trying their best but just have a fussy baby, and those horrible parents who should not be raising dogs, much less children. Lidia Soprano comes to mind.

  13. Ingannie

    Didn’t you just jump to conclusions about the character and sanity of GloZell? You only viewed a short video with her. You previously called her a biatch. Contradictory, much?

    I would never vouch for her sanity, but the article is about having passengers lose more and more of the precious space allotted to them as passengers on flights. GloZell may be as batty as a bedbug, but she was quiet and well behaved from what one could see on the video of the flight. Princess, on the other hand, screaming like a wounded animal, was disrupting others. She was not. Get the difference?

  14. Bam bam, it’s called jumping to conclusions, observation for two minutes cannot tell you much of anything.

    1. Inga – you can tell by looking whether a wound is infected or not. Two minutes is a lot of time to observe.

  17. BamBam,
    Wow, amazing you gleaned all that intimate knowlege about these people by a couple minute video. Assume much?

  18. The small amount that this video captured showed an oblivious mother/grandmother/custodian, who obviously had grown accustomed to this sort of behavior. I witness it all the time, in various venues, but it is amplified that much more so when one is crammed, like a sardine in a tin, flying through the sky, without any way to exit. Of course she’s a small child, but children differ. Some are well behaved, others are not. It took an outsider, either another passenger or a flight attendant, to try to soothe and quiet this child. If one condones the penalizing of an overweight individual, who inconveniences others with his/her size, then children under a certain age should have to pay extra to fly as well. Not wanting to have to hear blood curdling screams, within a small, cramped space, trapped, with no means of exit, does not translate into hating children. This behavior exists because it has been tolerated in the past.

  19. Who cares if someone called her a princess to try to distract her and quiet her down in a tough situation. It wasn’t the mother calling her a princess and it seemed to work. We don’t know what the mother was trying to do before this video started. Maybe the bathroom was occupied, sheesh. People are so self centered.

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