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posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 31 2017, @10:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the next-up:-the-case-of-the-expanding-airline-passenger dept.

The 'Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat' Gets a U.S. Court Rebuke

If you think the government should do something about the cramped legroom on airplanes, you've got a friend in a federal court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered aviation regulators to consider setting minimum standards for the space airlines give passengers.

"This is the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat," Judge Patricia Ann Millett wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. "As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size."

The court found in favor of Flyers Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, which had argued that steadily shrinking legroom and seat size created a safety hazard and the Federal Aviation Administration should impose new restrictions.

Additional coverage at Reuters and CNN

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge MILLETT.


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 31 2017, @01:37PM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday July 31 2017, @01:37PM (#547132) Journal

    probably flanked by two idiots who didn't hear the instruction about not inflating the jacket until leaving the plane

    It's called natural selection. You can't fix everything..

    The "oh I never check in any luggage" brigade trying to stick "hand luggage" bigger than my main suitcase in the overhead locker.

    Airlines thought they were smart by lumping the costs on passengers. That in turn screwed them back.

    I mostly fly international so you still have to go through some process almost indistinguishable to check-in anyway. No - this is a con.

    So you have to "check in" online first. And then again physically at the airport?
    Almost like one should program a bot to always check-in ..

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @03:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @03:32PM (#547197)

    It's called natural selection. You can't fix everything..

    You mean you are selected out for not checking the intelligence of your future seat neighbours before entering the plane?

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:49AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:49AM (#547453) Journal

      No, people will inflate their life west in the event of a accident before getting out of the plane body. And it's not your fault. But they will be out of the gene pool after such mistake.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by aclarke on Monday July 31 2017, @07:10PM

    by aclarke (2049) on Monday July 31 2017, @07:10PM (#547307) Homepage

    The "oh I never check in any luggage" brigade trying to stick "hand luggage" bigger than my main suitcase in the overhead locker.

    Airlines thought they were smart by lumping the costs on passengers. That in turn screwed them back.

    Yeah I don't feel bad about bringing carry-on in the least bit. This is entirely brought on by the airlines trying to charge once for the ticket, and then again for the bag. This is the law of unintended consequences.

    More things airlines could do:

    - Line up boarding zones ahead of time, so it's clear which zone is 1, 2, 3, etc. Then people could be in their own boarding zone lines, eliminating the mass of people waiting around the gate, making it unclear who's lining up to board, and who's hanging around waiting for their zone.

    - Remove the seat recline option in coach. OK I admit most people will disagree with this, but I pay for a certain personal zone when I fly. A small buffer around me, if you will. I'm 6'4 and it pisses me off to no end when some tiny little 5'1 person immediately leans their seat back into "my space". I continue to treat it as my space through the flight. I don't lean my seat back into the person behind me, and in my opinion if seats didn't recline, this problem would go away.

    - Get rid of the TSA in the US and almost all security theatre. Now, the US has all these programmes where you can pay extra, or do this or that, to avoid some of the hassles. We could also avoid the hassles by just removing them. Keep the pilots locked in their cockpit, and handle whatever happens behind there once the plane lands.

    - Encourage people to keep moving once they're immediately out of their bottleneck. This includes standing in the aisle to slowly remove a bag while people are desperately waiting behind them to catch a connecting flight, wandering slowly down the jetway once they're out of the plane, etc. This is human behaviour and one can observe it everywhere people exit something (red light, exiting a play, etc.) but it's obnoxious and not very thoughtful. Maybe not a lot the airline can do about it though.