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If you're wider than the seat, you should be looking for flights operated on Airbus equipment if you're stuck in coach. Their narrowbodies are a little wider than Boeing's, and you end up with about 1" more of width in a coach seat. You're best off looking at E70/75/90 regional jets (also ~18" wide seats, but 2+2 config) and A319/320/321 mainline.

That's probably the biggest reason why JetBlue is an all around more comfortable experience. They fly exclusively A320/321 and E90 aircraft. Yeah they're configured with more legroom than the legacies, but every seat in the fleet is as wide as you'll find in a coach seat.

6'3" tall and 44" chest here. I fly almost every week. Anything less than Economy Plus/Premium is pure torture. Even in Economy Plus I still usually bump shoulders with the fellow next to me. If he's big like me we might as well be cuddling.

I'm flying Seattle to Boston on Monday. I had to buy first class, there's no fucking way I'm doing that trip in anything less. Did I mention I have back problems (like many Americans).

Thank God I have the means and airline status to travel better. It really is a bus in the sky.

Might as well have standing room too.

The sad truth is, airlines won't optimize for the 99th percentile. We tall people just have to grin and bear it. I'm 6'10" and I basically just take the viewpoint that I'm lucky that airplanes exist at all to make it possible to cross such great distances in such short times. But I fly seldom so I'm sure I'd sing a different tune if I had to fly on any kind of regular basis.

In economy it is basically not possible for the person in front of me to recline. And boy do they try! Some especially inconsiderate ones even keep trying after they realize what they are doing. But I bring kneepads these days so it is not especially bothersome.

> I'm 6'10"

Oh God. It's quite the understatement to say you're 99th percentile. According to [1], only 1 in 127,929 people are taller than you.

[1] https://tall.life/height-percentile-calculator-age-country/

Interesting tool. At 200cm I'm halfway up the 99th percentile for men in the Netherlands (1 in 171 is taller than me), but dial it down to 198cm (6'6") and you hit the 1% boundary. For the Dutch (and many other 'tall' countries this means flying economy is gruelling, bordering on impossible, on long-haul flights for 1 in 100 Dutch men.

Naturally, I avoid flying as much as possible. Within Europe I'd rather spend hours trying to figure out the best dates and routes for cheap train tickets and utilize the few sleeper trains left — I really wish these didn't go out of style — rather than wait for hours at the airport and be physically tormented in flight.

I have a friend who's 7'4". Makes my measly 6'5" seem normal.

At what point should something like the ADA protect you from passenger spaces that are /literally/ too small to safely house you physically? I'd think the most effective solution would be just allowing you normal passenger rates but put you in the more expensive seat slots that actually fit.

If fat and tall people start using the ADA, I'd rather fight to end the ADA. I see this as gross abuse.

Being fat is not a disability. Being tall is not a disability. If you need more room, you pay more. This isn't about sensitivity. This is simple economics.

Do you think the ADA is about pity for the disabled, or about forcing businesses to serve 100% of the public, rather than serve the most profitable 98% at the expense of the most inconvenient 2%?

Humans come in different sizes. If you are genetically predisposed to be in the 99th percentile for height, or in the 1st percentile for height, do you think businesses should be allowed to charge you 200% or more of the price they charge someone at the 50th percentile?

Simple demographic statistics would dictate that aircraft be configured with some seats suitable for a person over 200 cm (6'6"), and some for children or for adults with dwarfism.

Neither atypical height nor atypical weight are necessarily disabilities, but you have to serve the customer as they are, or you are not serving the customer. Clearly, airlines would prefer to serve sardine-shaped customers, with low standard deviations for all measurements.

I know it is trendy to "accept" fatness which I'd argue does more harm to fat people than fat people hate but I digress.

No, I never said ADA is about pity. However, my opinion is that the ADA was not for accepting people as they are. Just pay the extra money and fly first class if you're big and tall.

It is funny how everyone hates all this bureaucratic red tape until the red tape is good for them.

There is no right answer. We as a society have to decide if we are willing to foot the bill. Things will change as more people are getting taller and fatter though.

I agree that airlines should serve atypical sizes but I hesitate to require airlines to not charge a premium. As much as I hate airlines, common sense must prevail.

It really is a bus in the sky.

I'd say it's worse. The buses I've been on have been far more comfortable than a plane, and I'm not even wide or tall.

Fair point. I've been on many buses more comfortable than coach on a plane.

Commute with bus everyday. Definitely more comfy.

I'd much rather take a bus. More room and no fighting for overhead bins. You don't feel like cattle getting rustled into a aluminum cargo container with hundreds of pounds of junk inches above your head. There's also typically not the dreaded middle seat on a bus (2+2, but not like the awful regional jets where it's really a booster seat).

My local train service runs two types of trains: double-decker (with 2/2 seats) and single-decker (with 3/2 seats). The single-level trains cannot comfortably hold three average-size adults, so they effectively have half the capacity.

I'm taller and the same width. I won't do aisle seats because jag-offs boarding and deplaning will rub my shoulder raw.

You mention a point worth highlighting: status.

This is why I fly pretty much exclusively American. Not because American is the best airlines (it is not, but hey it's not United either). But because if I optimized solely for cost I wouldn't have any status on any airline. I'd be the first one bumped. I'd have worse seats and I'd be upgraded less.

People like to bitch about how airlines treat them like crap but at the same time they often don't have any loyalty to any airline. What do you expect?

Just this last flight from NYC to SFO I got upgraded to (lie-flat) business class for "free" (it cost I think 6 500-mile stickers but I have like 100 of those so who cares?). My AA status also multiplies all the miles I earn on AA and oneworld flights. That's worth something.

I just wish AA had PE. Main Cabin "Plus" is not the same thing.

People don't really have loyalty to airlines because the requirements for getting any benefits to that loyalty keep going up-up-up, though. If I fly anywhere, I'm paying for it, and the investment is huge before you even start seeing anything for it. And you couple that with the way airlines treat passengers in general, and the idea of loyalty to one is pretty much "...what?".

My business partner, who's been at this longer than me, has JetBlue's Mosaic, but the perks for that are pretty lame given how much money we put through JetBlue.

There are status challenges available to address that issue.

So I fly at least one round-trip a month and I'd never even heard of this. That probably doesn't help with the notion of airline loyalty, yeah?

A few years back I had the unpleasant experience of going from Chairman's Preferred on US Airways, which no longer exists, to Executive Platinum on American, which US Airways merged with.

I gave it a little over a year to see if they could solve the problems. Aside from just the teething issues of a major-airline merger, AA's approach to customer service was horrid, their reliability was in the toilet (ask me how many times I had connections in AA hubs on time versus how many times I spent the night involuntarily!), etc.

So I jumped ship. I will never set foot in a United aircraft of my own free will, so I looked at Delta, which had and still has excellent reliability and satisfaction ratings from their frequent flyers. And it was relatively simple to set up a status match with them. I provided a photograph of my then-current AA Executive Platinum credentials, and they enrolled me. I had 90 days to meet a mileage/segments target, and if I did I'd be Delta Platinum for the following year.

The target was, IIRC, just under 19,000 miles, and I hit it with about a month to spare.

The only catch to a status match is generally you can only do it once. If you later lose status, or switch to another airline, they will not let you match back.

Some airlines will also let you trial your way into status with no pre-existing credentials. When and whether and how they offer those varies a lot from airline to airline.

Most are advertised through large employers or direct marketing emails. So if you're sending everything from United to spam, you won't see it. Some airlines still just hand out free status based on your employer (I have Cathay Pacific status through that sort of program despite having never paid for a CX flight).

American auto-enrolled me in one earlier this year. Gave me free platinum status for three months and 20 500-mile upgrade certs. The certs were mine and I had those three months to fly 5000 miles to extend status for a year.

Now that I know about their existence, I'm totally seeing it. My point is more that this is a super-niche thing and so I'm not surprised that nobody has any loyalty to an airline (which rank down there with people who yell at kids on their lawn for customer satisfaction).

>People like to bitch about how airlines treat them like crap but at the same time they often don't have any loyalty to any airline. What do you expect?

I expect said airlines to work to EARN that loyalty?

After all, it's the people who pay their money to them, not vice versa.

> they often don't have any loyalty to any airline. What do you expect?

Not to be injured because of the flight. Is that too much of an ask?

AA's PE is what took the fear out of international long-haul for me. Being of similar stature, the notion of sitting in a 17.2" seat across the Atlantic was a non-starter, but with business class tickets being potentially an order of magnitude better than economy deals, what choice was I left with?

As soon as AA introduce PE in the 789's from DFW to Madrid, Paris, and Seoul, I booked. Its not lie-flat business class, but it affords a little personal dignity in being to reorient my body periodically.

British airways PE is actually not that bad. It's not as good as Cathay Pacific's but the hard product is quite good. Pitch is 38 inch (same as Cathay's) so it's good enough, it's not that wide at 18.5 inch (1 inch less than CX) but better than a coach seat.

BA's long haul PE is called World Traveller Plus and it is only economy plus, not "Business Minus" like PE on CX, Qantas, JAL, etc.

So it is better than coach, but only by a few inches. It is generally priced appropriately, though.