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  • Ahthe luxury of air travel! Knees tucked under your jaw. Feet wedged against the bag

  • you stuffed beneath the seat in front of you. One elbow in your hip crease. The other fighting

  • your neighbor for space on the arm rest. And the comfortingthud-thud-thudof a kid

  • kicking your seatback from the row behind you. It’s everything you could want -- not!

  • But this isn’t a clown car. And I’m a big guywith a matching belly! So why are

  • airline seats so dang small?!

  • Well, there is cause for hope that theyll soon get bigger. I’ll tell you why in a

  • minute, but for nowIf you must get up to visit the bathroomeveryone else has

  • to swing their knees to the side while you slither past. And if you still can’t fit,

  • theyll have to stand up and then Do-se-do with you in the aisle. You might even have

  • to wake them first. Which takes time sounless you can do all this with your legs crossedplan

  • in advance!

  • It’s enough to make anyone want to spend their vacation moneymoney meant for dinners,

  • shows, and souvenirson a slightly bigger seat in First Class!

  • It wasn’t always this way. Maybe youve seen ads for ultra-fancy aircrafts with seats

  • that become beds, hot showers, and cocktail bars and you thought, “Wow, someday, in

  • the future, when I’m rich, I’ll fly like that!” But those amenities were normal in

  • the past. Well, not the showers, but as late as the 1970’s… Traveling First Class on

  • an airplane often meant accesson the plane, during the flightto lounges boasting everything

  • from dining areas with tables and table clothsto cocktail bars with leopard print seats! And

  • this stuff wasn’t just for the super-richor the moderately richAmerican Airline’s

  • Economy Class had a piano bar!

  • OK, the piano was really a small electric organ, but the airline hired a live piano

  • player to entertain the passengers who stood around itor sat, unbelted, on giant ottomansand

  • sang!

  • To be fair, passengers have changed as much as airlines. Last week I tried to start a

  • sing-along in my row and my seatmates shushed me! (Ya Party poopers!)

  • But, while we might complain about how things have changed for us, that crying baby three

  • rows over? Well, she should be grateful. In the 1950’s parents could tuck junior into

  • a basket that hung off the side of the overhead compartment!

  • OK, Baby, I know that five-point harness in your belted-in baby carrier is frustrating.

  • I hear you crying! You want to practice rolling over and a hammock sounds good to you. But

  • what if you fell out during turbulence? Youre safer now.

  • So, we agreewe adults anywaythat the overhead baby thing was a bad idea. But the

  • bar and lounge sound pretty good. What happened to them? And what does their demise have to

  • do withseat size?

  • Youve probably guessed that money is at the root of this. You see, airlines have two

  • main priorities.

  • Their first priority is to get you to your destination safely: that’s why they never

  • take off without giving you instructions about what to do in an emergency. (Well talk

  • about how safety impacts seat sizeand how it might even make your seats biggerin

  • a moment.)

  • The airline’s second priority is to make money. Airlines are in business. And no matter

  • how much money a business is makingthey always want more. And while airlines don’t

  • sell seats (you can’t take them with you), they do rent them for the duration of a trip:

  • one to a ticket.

  • So, the more seats, the more tickets. And the more tickets, the more money.

  • That’s why first the lounges wentTo make room for more seats!

  • Then, well, if seats are smaller, you can fit more of them into a plane.

  • So, the seats got smaller to make room for moresmallerseats! Airlines measure seat

  • room using something calledpitch.” When you think about it, “pitchis an alarming

  • word: in baseball, the best pitches are ones no one can hit. Pitch means sticky taror

  • something steeplike the steep price of an airline ticket!

  • A sales pitch can trick you into buying something you don’t needand when airplanes measure

  • pitch,” it is a little misleading. Pitch doesn’t measure leg room (we all have different

  • sized legs anyway). Pitch doesn’t measure the distance from the edge of your seat cushion

  • to the back of the seat in front of you. (They’d rather you didn’t know that).

  • Pitch refers to the space between two identical parts on a seat. A 29-inch pitch does not

  • mean you have 29 inches to sit in. It means that there are 29 inches between the edge

  • of your seat and the edge of the seat in front of you.

  • 29 inches to accommodate:

  • your legs from the knees down. —your feet

  • that tucked-under-the-seat-in-front-of-you bag

  • the back of the seat in front of youincludingthe little pocket for magazines and flight

  • information andthe fold down table

  • And! —The whole other passenger in front of youincluding

  • their back cushionfrom their knees up (where it starts all over again).

  • That’s pitch!

  • In the 1950’s Boeing’s 707—a cool plane --widely considered the first commercial jethad

  • a pitch of 34 inchesbut it’s not like people back then were staying in their seats.

  • They were traipsing off to get a drink at the piano bar!

  • Todaywith no lounge to hang out inwe are really stuck in our seats! And I do mean

  • stuck. Seats have shrunk from that once roomy 34-inch pitch to as low as 29 inches. Weve

  • lost five inches. Meanwhile, the average American man’s weight has jumped from 166 to nearly

  • 200 pounds. (And that’s just the average, nearly half of us are bigger!)

  • That means, while pitch has shrunk by 15 percent, passengers have grown by 17 percent! That’s

  • a lot of scrunching! Hey, is that why airline food is notoriously unappetizing? Are they

  • hoping we won’t eat it and somehow lose weight inflight? That’s… not a good sales

  • pitch.

  • On top of that, were all about an inch taller. And seat width has diminished too!

  • In the 1990’s, the narrowest seats were 19 inches; today the widest seat in economy

  • is skinnier than that! And some seats are as little as 17 inches wide. If your hips

  • measure 40 inches aroundyouve got a problem!

  • Now, the airlines will tell you that theyve redesigned the seats in such a way that youll

  • never notice this shrinking pitch. For example: by making the cushion at your back thinneror

  • in Airline speak, “less bulky.”

  • But please, My knees Disagrees OoohThe squeeze!

  • (sorrycouldn’t help myself!)

  • It’s not just knees who are complaining. The U.S. Congress is worried too. They may,

  • or may not, befat catsin congress, but you don’t have to be overweight to feel

  • cramped in an airline seat. And congress is right to worry about what could go wrong if

  • passengers are wedged so tightly in their seats that crowded conditions slow them down.

  • Remember how much trouble it was to get to the bathroom? Hopefully, that’s not an emergency.

  • But what if you were flying when a real emergency occurred? Flight evacuations are rarein

  • fact airplanes are widely, and rightly, considered the safest way to travelbut emergencies

  • do happen.

  • When a plane is in trouble, every second counts. Passengers need to evacuate quickly. You want

  • to grab your flotation device and whoosh down that inflatable slideor jump into the waiting

  • raftOK, I hope it never happens, but it does sound fun!—or just get out as quickly

  • and calmly as possible.

  • And some passengers have small children that slow them down, while elderly fliers may already

  • be moving a bit slowly to begin with. Right now, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

  • plans to spend 12 days testing and measuring evacuation times. A few members of Congress

  • expressed concern that the test evacuees might all be slim athletes andin an exciting

  • show of congressional co-operationcongress is using its oversight to make sure that at

  • least some of the test evacuees have physical disabilities and other impediments common

  • in the general population.

  • The chances that youll ever need to evacuate an airplane are as slim as I wish I was, but

  • the silver lining of that unlikely scenario is that Congress may insist that we all get

  • bigger seats again! That’s a winning pitch!

  • And if you win the lottery before that happens? Please -- buy me a ticket on one of those

  • planes with the hot showers! Okay wake up, it’s only a dream….

  • Hey, if you learned something new today, then give the video a like and share it with a

  • friend! And here are some other cool videos I think you'll enjoy. Just click to the left

  • or right, and stay on the Bright Side of life!

Ahthe luxury of air travel! Knees tucked under your jaw. Feet wedged against the bag

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飛行機の座席が小さい理由がわかりました (We Understood Why Plane Seats Are So Small)

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    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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