"We've gotten bigger, but airline seats haven't"

Sunday, March 25, 2007

We've gotten bigger, but airline seats haven't
By Beverly Beyette
The Chicago (IL) Tribune


You and that pretzel you're snacking on in the airlines' cheap seats have
something in common: You're twisted into a shape that's simply not natural.

Who will stop the pain?

The bad news: Probably not the airlines -- at least, not anytime soon.

Consider this: Aircraft designers are dealing with space limitations. A
Boeing single-class 767-400ER, for example, can carry a maximum of 375
passengers and handle a maximum takeoff weight of 450,000 pounds. Boeing
guidelines, which comply with those of the Federal Aviation Administration,
allow for 185 pounds per passenger, 20 of that for carry-on baggage.

But airlines are trying to cope with a range of passenger sizes. As a
result, seat design is a compromise, and comfort is now defined as the
absence of pain and injury.

"We're trying to protect a woman a bit under 4 feet 11 and a man 6 feet 3,"
says Klaus Brauer, Boeing's director of passenger satisfaction and revenue.

"In the course of a week, airlines face every conceivable body type on the
planet," says Brauer, who's 6 feet 1 and 200-plus pounds.

If your Economy seat also seems thinner and harder, that may be because it
is. Airlines have been installing less padded, lighter seats while complying
with an FAA regulation requiring that all aircraft built after October 2009
have seats designed to withstand 16 times the force of gravity (rather than
the current nine).

For most passengers, legroom -- lack of it -- is a big issue, but it isn't
the only one. Headrests can be fixed in "ouch" positions.

And take those "ears" -- the projections at each side of the headrest
designed to prevent head tilt when a passenger is asleep. They are
positioned to be at, or below, the shoulders of tall passengers. It's "one
of those cases," says Brauer, "in which a well-intentioned enhancement can
make 'the tallest' passengers quite uncomfortable."

And as Americans get taller and fatter, they're bound to "spill into other
people's spaces," says Peter Budnick, president and chief executive of Park
City, Utah-based Ergoweb Inc., an ergonomics consulting and training company
that has examined airline seating from the standpoint of both ergonomics and
anthropometry -- the study of the human body in relation to things people
use.

Since the 1960s -- the dawn of the jet age -- the average American has
become an inch taller and 25 pounds heavier, according to a 2004 report (the
most recent available) by the national Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention that was based on a study charting changes between 1960 and 2002.

The CDC found that in 2002 the average man 20 to 74 years of age was 5 feet
9 1/2 and weighed 191 pounds, while the average woman in the same age range
was 5 feet 4 and weighed 164 pounds.

Ideally, seats would be bigger, but more weight means higher fuel costs. As
it is, obesity is affecting energy efficiency. In a 2004 article in the
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the CDC estimated that in 2000
alone those added pounds that passengers had packed on since the '60s cost
airlines $275 million for 350 million more gallons of fuel.

Even the skinniest flier knows that working in flight is a stiff neck
waiting to happen. "The laptop pushed up against your belly is not an ideal
computing position," Budnick says.

Virgin Atlantic Airways took ergonomics and anthropometry into account when
it designed its Economy and Premium Economy seats introduced in January. (On
Chicago-London flights that debut in April the Premium Economy changes will
be in place probably by May or June; the new Economy seats will not be on
all Chicago-London flights.)

Traditionally, engineers design seats, making cost and safety their
priorities, then designers do their best to make them look nice with, for
example, attractive fabrics. But Virgin Atlantic's new seats were designed
by its 15-member in-house team in consultation with London-based
PearsonLloyd, known for furniture design. One goal: to make them feel more
like chairs. The all-leather Premium Economy seats are 21 inches wide with a
38-inch pitch (the distance between two rows of seats) and have
dual-position footrests. Industrywide, the average pitch is 32 inches.

To create the illusion of more space in regular Economy, says Joe Ferry,
Virgin Atlantic's head of design, designers "focused on making the back of
the seat in front feel more like it's a part of yours." The trick: a
carbon-fiber entertainment component housing that covers the seat back,
dividing the space. Economy seats move forward and rise as they recline and
have adjustable lumbar support and headrest.

"'Challenging' is too small a word" to describe the task of designing a seat
to accommodate the smallest woman or largest man, Ferry says. "Comfort is
very difficult to measure," he says. "What we're measuring is discomfort,
trying to eliminate that as much as possible."

Boeing's design team found that cabin design may distract passengers from
the realities of Economy seats. When Boeing rolls out its 250-seat 787 in
May 2008 and its 467-seat 747-8 in 2010, they will be designed with larger
windows. Overhead bins washed in white light to resemble clouds and ceilings
illuminated in blue -- as in sky -- will evoke "what people might see if
they could fly without our help," Brauer says.

Till then, passengers can make flying more comfortable by browsing hundreds
of seat maps at www.seatguru.com. The site can help them learn which seats
to avoid (noisy, right by a lavatory) and which to snap up (exit, bulkhead).

Then, maybe you can take it sitting down.

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