How Big Is Your Butt? Seat Wars in Coach

by Robert McGarvey

We all know the brouhaha – sometimes even fisticuffs and videos – involving seat pitch which is the distance between rows of seats in coach on a plane. That number by the way is around 4 inches smaller than it was 50 years ago. If you think your knees clang into the seat in front of you more often, it’s not because your legs have grown but because the pitch has shrunk.

But just maybe the real problem in coach is the size of the seat itself. A half century ago seats were usually 18 inches wide and today they are 16-1/2 inches wide, according to reporting by Stephanie Rosenbloom in the NYTimes.

Doesn’t seem that much?

The aggravating reality is that meantime we have gotten bigger. A lot bigger. In the 1960s the average American male was 5’8″ and weighed 163 pounds. The average woman was 5’3″ and weighed 140.

Today the average woman weighs 170 and is 5’4″. The average man is 5’9″ and weighs 200 pounds.

Just as we are getting bigger the seats in coach are getting smaller.

In 2018 Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to set minimum sizes for airplane seats but it has yet to do so. How exactly it managed to ignore that Congressional mandate for so long is a bit of mystery but not much useful was done in many agencies in that era. But now, according to USA Today, the FAA is seeking public comment on seat size with the intent of issuing a ruling.

Comments from ordinary citizens apparently are welcome. Don’t be shy.

Consumer advocates are not being shy. Case in point: “Seats have continued to shrink by some airlines, and people are continuing to get larger,” said Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org. “Our estimate is that only 20% of the population can reasonably fit in these seats now. It’s beyond a matter of comfort, or even emergency evacuation, there are serious health and safety issues when you’re put in cramped conditions for hours on end.”

Hudson is right. The issue that powers the FAA involvement isn’t comfort – surprise! – but safety and in particular speed and ease of evacuation in an emergency. It doesn’t take an ergonomics expert to assert that snug seats, tiny rows and bigger people complicate evacuation at speed and very well might lead to more injuries, possibly even deaths.

What the FAA wants to calibrate is what are the optimal sizes from a safety perspective – and the more you stare at how our sizes have gone in one direction over the past 50 years while airplane seating has gone in the opposite direction you have to think that something is flatout crazy here.

But for many of us the money questions are more personal: Will I fit comfortably in my seat? Will I spill into the adjacent seat?

A stop at Seatguru will give you useful info that may help you reach your own decisions. Take your body measurements and drill into that site’s data. You’ll get a good read on how comfortable you will be on a particular flight.

Another option – pricey, yes, but sure – is to sit in the front of plane. For instance: in Premium Economy on Delta, seat width is about the same as coach (18.5″ vs 18″ in coach). But there’s a couple inches more pitch.

And there’s lot more room in business class. Both pitch and seat width.

Personally my current preference is Premium Economy but if I had more bucks or miles to burn I’d always go for business class. Especially on a flight of more than a couple hours. When you want assured comfort on a flight, know you must spend for it.

But then there are many who need and want a comfortable flight in coach. What will the FAA rule about seat size?

Unless catastrophic predictions emerge about emergencies and current seat sizes – and I don’t see that happening because so far it hasn’t – it is difficult to envision the FAA issuing a rule that airplane seats must be a larger size than currently prevails. Congress may have ordered the FAA to set minimum seat sizes but so far the agency has ducked that order and you can bet that the carriers and their airplane makers are busily lobbying, both the FAA and Congress, to leave that decision in the hands of the private sector.

Which means it is up to us – you and me – to personally provide for our own comfort in the sky. The airlines won’t do it, I doubt the FAA will, but we can.