Cockpit Confidential (27 page)

On many intra-European flights, classes are partitioned on short notice according to demand. The seats themselves don't change, but the dividing bulkheads and curtains are slid along tracks. On Air France, economy becomes business by virtue of blocking out the middle seat of a three-abreast block. Another popular trend is dividing economy into two sections, one with extra legroom and, in some cases, a fancier seat. “Economy Plus” or “Economy Comfort” are among the branding terms, though technically it's still, well, coach.

While people will never stop complaining about the discomforts of economy class, it happens that premium class, be it first or business, has never been more extravagant than it is right now. Not since travelers slept in private berths in the 1940s have things been so swanky up front—though definitely in a sleeker, twenty-first century flavor. Not long ago, a fat leather seat and a doting flight attendant were the hallmarks of inflight luxury. Today, competition and technology have brought us all kinds of eccentric goodies. On outré-chic carriers like Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, and Qatar Airways, one finds a stand-up cocktail lounge and even an inflight beauty therapist. Passengers doze in individual mini-suites with 6-foot seat-beds, down-filled duvets, and electric privacy barriers. Cabin staff perform turndown service while you slip into designer pajamas, and there's sometimes a pull-up ottoman if you'd like company during dinner. Circadian-friendly phases of ceiling lighting are adjusted by the crew, including constellations projected onto the overhead bins during nighttime hours. On its transatlantic flights, Turkish Airlines brings along a business class chef.

It goes without saying, of course, that most folks aren't riding around on expense accounts and haven't got $9,000 to drop on a seat to Hong Kong. If it's any consolation, economy class has its modern-day frills as well. Live TV, on-demand movies, and inflight Wi-Fi are among the common amenities. Some Asian and European carriers have switched to shell-style seats that, when reclined, slide forward rather than tip rearward, preserving space for the person behind you. And although complimentary meals are increasingly rare on shorter flights, buy-onboard options are affordable and often tasty.

People are under the impression that airlines continue to cram ever more seats into their economy sections. This is mostly untrue. Airlines cannot simply shove in as many seats as they want; commercial planes are certified for a maximum occupancy based on, among other things, the number of emergency exits. Actually, economy class layouts have hardly changed since jets first became popular in the 1960s. In the early days, carriers flirted with five abreast seating on narrow-body planes instead of the standard six, or nine-abreast on a 747 instead of the ten used today, but these were short-lived schemes. The cross-sections of airliners as you see them today are basically unchanged from forty years ago. If anything, they are slightly roomier. The Airbus A380 has the same ten-abreast floor plan as the 747 but is wider by approximately a foot, while six-abreast aircraft such as the popular A320 have a few more inches of head and elbow room than the 707s and 727s of old.

It's legroom, though, not elbow space, that flyers gripe about most. The distance between rows is called “pitch,” and here too, historically, things have been better
and
worse. It's true that carriers have been tightening up the rearmost rows to accommodate those roomier (and more expensive) “Economy Plus” sections up front, but anyone who flew the old PeoplExpress remembers how pitiless and pitchless a cabin can be laid out. Or Laker Airways, whose “SkyTrain” service ran between the United States and London in the 1970s. Sir Freddie Laker, the airline's flamboyant founder, configured his DC-10s with a bone-crushing 345 seats—about a hundred more than most DC-10s at the time (the plane had eight full-size exits that helped keep this legal, and there was no first or business class).

If you ask me, what makes economy uncomfortable is only partly to do with legroom. It's more about the shapes of the seats themselves and the dreadful ergonomics of the surrounding space. Each time I settle into an economy chair, I silently wonder what malformed extraterrestrial it was designed for. “Settle in” is the wrong term; you don't attempt to relax so much as balance yourself in place. The pressure points are all wrong, your legs are unsupported, there's no place for your arms, and lumbar support is nil. The tray tables and armrests are the wrong shape and in the wrong location.

The most obvious way to make economy more pleasant would be to have fewer seats in the first place, but until people are willing to pay substantially higher fares, this a nonstarter. Engineers are also faced with the challenge of designing a frame that is lightweight and extremely strong, able to withstand several times the force of gravity. Nevertheless, there's no excuse for the poorly designed seats we're accustomed to. Through the use of high-tech materials and a bit of imagination, a chair can be safe, lightweight, sturdy, and comfortable all at once. Indeed, ergonomically sculpted seats from innovative manufacturers like Recaro and Thompson Solutions have been on the market for years. If only more carriers would buy them.

In addition to a seat that actually conforms to the shape of a human body, below are six things that ought to be standard in any economy class:

1. Lumbar support. Existing seats lack any kind of lower-back cushioning. There is only a vacant space into which your lower back sinks, dragging down and contorting the rest of you.
   
2. Inflight Wi-Fi and on-demand, in-seat video with a personal screen of at least nine inches. I'm lumping these together because they both capitalize on the strategy of
   distraction
   , and that's what keeping passengers happy is all about. Browsing the Web or watching a movie are ideal time-killers. Five or ten dollars for Internet isn't unreasonable, but it should be free in first or business.
   
3. An adjustable headrest. Not the half-assed kind that allows your head to loll around, but one that fits snugly.
   
4. A tray table that extends to reach the body, so a passenger needn't hunch over to eat or work. Ideally, the tray should have a curved leading edge to better fit your torso and should be the sort that unfolds from the armrest, not from the seat in front. This solves the hunch-over problem
   and
   avoids the hazard of having your computer crushed when the person in front of you suddenly reclines, pinching your screen between the table and the upper cushion. “Assault recliners” is my name for those passengers who come hauling back all at once, leaving you but a split-second to save your laptop from this deadly nutcracker. Tray tables also need a raised edge to keep food and beverages from spilling into your lap during climb or in rough air. Some have recessed cup holders, but many are perfectly flat and smooth, so that your coffee comes skating backward whenever the plane is nose-high. A quarter-inch ridge would prevent this. One assumes that aircraft interior designers are more or less familiar with the concept of gravity; there's no reason for such a tweak not to be universal. It wouldn't cost more than a few pennies per tray, if anything at all. And while we're at it, give us one of those ring-style cup holders that fold out from the seat back. (They're common in Europe, but I've never seen one on a U.S. carrier.) They help prevent spills and free up space on your tray.
   
5. Power ports. If a full AC outlet is asking too much, at least give us a USB connection. They're increasingly common on long-haul jets, but at some point, every plane ought to have them.
   

Whether or not you're comfortable back there, remember to get up and stretch at periodic intervals. With long-haul flying times now surpassing the gestation periods of many small mammals, there are growing concerns about an affliction known as deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, brought on by the immobilizing confines of an airplane seat. Also called “economy class syndrome,” it's a condition where potentially lethal blood clots form in the legs and can spread through the body. Those with preexisting conditions (obesity, smoking) are at higher risk, but all passengers should avoid remaining sedentary for extended periods. Stand, stretch, take a walk up the aisle. Ultra-longrange jets are often outfitted with inflight buffet zones and lounges—socializing areas laid out with drinks and snacks. More than just a perk, the idea is to entice people to move around at regular intervals. For those who wander in barefoot after sleeping, the buffet zone on the A340-500 has a heated floor.

None of us enjoys the tedium of boarding and disembarking. Bottlenecks in the aisles and the throat of the jet bridge can be eternal, and it takes several minutes just to get from the doorway to your seat, or vice versa.

If you want to make things slightly easier on your fellow travelers, here's a simple recommendation: when boarding, please do not place your carry-on bags in the first empty bin that you come to. Use a bin as close to your seat as possible. It drives me crazy when I see a guy shoving his 26-inch Tumi into a bin above row 5, then continuing on to his assigned seat in row 52. I know it's tempting, but this causes the forward bins to fill up quickly. Those seated in the front must now travel backward to stow their belongings, then return upstream, against the flow of traffic, slowing everybody down. Then, after landing, these same people have to fight their way rearward again while everybody else is trying to exit. Am I wrong to suggest that assigned bins might be a good idea? There are a lot more seats than bins, you can argue, and not everybody carries the same sized carry-ons, but I'm convinced there's a way to make it work. If nothing else, airlines should make a gate-side announcement requesting that passengers please use compartments at or near their seats.

The traditional method of filling a plane from back to front has been part of the problem. A lot of airlines now board by “zone” or “group” instead. One element of these techniques is to board window and center seats first, followed by the aisles, so that fewer people have to squeeze around one another. Another option is to board rows out-of-sequence, in staggered sets rather than consecutively. You call every second or third row, allow people to stow their bags, then repeat. According to one study, you can load a plane up to ten times faster this way.

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference, as many people hate getting on a plane early and will wait as long as possible, ignoring the boarding calls. These last-minute boarders cause at least as many holdups as the bin-hoggers.

Another recommendation: families with kids in strollers should be boarded first, and upon arrival they should be asked to stay in their seats until everybody else has exited. How many total hours are wasted each day waiting for parents to assemble their strollers and gather up the approximately 90 pounds of travel gear that is apparently required by every child younger than five?

Using multiple doors also speeds things up. We don't see them much in the United States, but boarding bridges that attach to both the forward and center doors (on those planes that have them) are common in Europe and Asia. A number of gates at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport have unusual bridges with access to the
rear
doors as well, passing over the plane's left wing. (Boarding and disembarking almost always takes place on the left side of the plane. The right side is used for cargo and baggage loading, servicing, and catering.)

Meanwhile, I'm sure you're wondering about those situations, of which there are far too many, when a plane stops short of the terminal, accompanied by the embarrassed crew announcing that “our gate is currently occupied” or that the marshaling personnel aren't yet in place. Yes, the arrival station is kept abreast of every flight's ETA, so why, why, why, is the gate not ready on time? I'm afraid I haven't got a good answer. There can be more to these situations that meets the eye—a plane's assigned parking spot is based on arrival and departure times, passenger loads, customs and immigration issues—but I suspect that understaffing has a lot to do with it. Pilots find this as frustrating as the rest of you.

Clapping upon landing was still widespread as recently as the late '70s and early '80s. No surprise that it scarcely happens anymore. The number of Americans who fly at least twice a year has more than quadrupled in the past quarter century. The familiarity of the routine, and the hassles that come with it, have rubbed away whatever sense of excitement or novelty was still there. It remains somewhat common overseas, however, where passengers aren't (yet) as jaded. In the past few years, on trips I've taken to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, cheers and applause could be heard on roughly a quarter of the landings.

Do crews feel offended or insulted? Not in the least. It isn't a critique of the landing or a judgment on the pilots' skills. Neither is it an outburst of relief at having cheated gravity and lived to tell about it. Even the most nervous flyers are more optimistic than that. I wouldn't deconstruct it too much. It pretty much speaks for itself and needn't be taken too seriously. It's just having fun, and to me it lends a folksy, humane touch to the end of a flight.

And you'll notice, when it does happen, it's a strictly economy class phenomenon. People in first or business never clap. You'll be apt to look for a socioeconomic meaning to this, and maybe there is one, but the dynamics of economy class—more people sitting closer together—lend itself to the occasion. There's a certain communal spirit, especially after a long-haul flight, when you've spent several hours in a relatively intimate space with hundreds of people. In a way, the applause acts like a big collective handshake.

Another thing you don't see much anymore are passenger visits to the cockpit. People seem to think that security rules prohibit such visits, but that's not so. It can't be done in the air, of course, but you're more than welcome to drop by when the plane is parked at the gate, before or after a flight (just be sure to ask a flight attendant first). Kids will sometimes come up, often with their parents in tow, to look around and maybe get their picture taken in the captain's seat, but adults almost never stop by on their own. Which is too bad. Meeting the crew can be helpful for nervous flyers, and most pilots are flattered by somebody taking interest in our odd little workspace.