[cattle class] how much will you put up with

In September, 2006, I ran a piece on "cattle class" in aeroplanes.

While ostensibly a discussion of the problems for tall passengers and a new device to stop the person in front putting his seatback back on you, it soon descended to an entertaining bitching session about airlines in general, for example:

Weight, height, overhead luggage compartment space, shoes removal, toilet queues, "overtaken spaces", reclined seats, "gases", sweat and smells … [they] annoy me even more than seat recliners ...

Bill Bryson's take on the shoddy Northwest Airlines followed and I commented at the time:

If Bryson can be believed on this, it’s a staggering indictment of the attitudes of airlines towards the paying customer.

Iceland Review girl Sara has now chipped in with this comment about cheap flights:

A four-hour chorus of crying babies? Sure, I’ll take it if the flight only puts me back ISK 35,000 (USD 587, EUR 424) to get to North America.

[K]eep in mind that the most common buzzword when talking about Heimsferdir is “budget.” Which it is—you have to pay for drinks, sandwiches, cans of Pringles aboard the plane—but the flight itself is a bargain.

If you can occupy yourself for five hours of noise and semi-chaotic conditions, then this is the way to go if you’re a starving student or an airline price shopper. But when I mean noise, I mean noise—screaming babies in front, behind and beside you for more than Four Straight Hours.

When I say filth I mean watching the girl next to me spread cheese on her cracker with her finger and then wipe that dirty finger on the chair. Not to mention her kid who stepped on potato chips all over the floor.

Borderline hilarious/maddening. I have no idea which movie was screened because it was too loud for me to hear through the speakers.

And what of the other end of the spectrum? Charlie Brooker at The Guardian [via the Age] flew First Class and commented:

There are three classes of air travel - misery, misery lite and slightly comfortable.

In first class, I had a seat that reclined far enough to become a flat bed. I drank champagne and ate smoked salmon from a china plate with weighty silverware, while watching a flat-screen TV.

When I got bored with that, there were a couple of framed pictures on the wall. That was the weirdest, most needless touch.

"If a terrorist shoe-bombs a hole in the fuselage right now," I thought, "and the plane corkscrews towards the ocean at 1000kmh, I'm going to fix my gaze on that gilt-framed photograph and remind myself that I'm dying in the lap of luxury."

The way airlines really think about all this is of great interest to me and was partly revealed via Via magazine:

Klaus Brauer, who surveys 90,000 passengers every year as Boeing’s resident expert on passenger comfort, is quoted in Air Transport World as saying:

“We’ve always known intuitively—and it’s correct—that if we increase pitch [he means seat angle here], we make people more comfortable and if we reduce pitch, we make people less comfortable. Seat pitch is the ‘throttle’ by which airlines can increase or decrease comfort.”

However, according to Boeing spokesman Sean Griffin, the real indicator of passenger comfort is neither seat width nor pitch.

First, it is on-time departure and arrival. According to this theory, if the plane is late departing, the passenger who is worried about making a connection or arriving on time will be tense and there is not much the carrier can do to make the flight pleasant.

Second, and perhaps most important to creature comfort, Griffin says, is sitting next to an empty seat. That has the effect of adding up to an extra 41/4 inches in seat width, according to the Boeing experts, as well as a feeling of privacy.

For me, flight duration is perhaps the biggest factor. It's going to be a messy day anyway so "on time" doesn't mean as much as it does on a train, for me. If it's a shorthaul flight, I don't care - I go into Dr. Who mode and shut eveything out, we land, it's all over. Cheapest seats possible on a reputable airline please.

On a longhaul - oh what a different matter. Now all the factors mentioned above come into it, plus safety.