In the Trenches: Setting Priorities – Intuit Small Business Blog
There are a lot of projects I’d like to complete here at Cranky Concierge. But instead of trying to do them all, I need to pick one at a time and focus.

United’s New Seats: the Good, the Bad, and the In-Between – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
United is rolling out new seats on its A319s and A320s. Here’s the good and the bad of the move.

I thought this made for a very interesting guest post. How wider seats could find their way on to airplanes…

The most difficult part of traveling for someone who is fat is in fact the traveling itself. I’m no small person, but thankfully I’m not OVERLY huge. But I still dread getting on an airplane if my upgrade doesn’t clear, or there’s someone in the middle seat. I stand at 6’1 and clock in at just over 300 pounds – so I’m someone you probably wouldn’t choose to sit by (which makes flying Southwest Airlines a bit more comfy for me). I’m also a frequent flier and spent 14 years in the business so I’ve been able to experience being fat on both sides. Airlines are squeezing us in with each new seat design or aircraft as we, in general, get wider.

So how do I fly? Carefully. I’m normally apologetic to the person next to me, even though I really don’t spill over too much. I move my arms so that my larger build doesn’t spill over on to their seat, which means I look like a human pretzel for 3 hours. When I was a Premier Executive with United, it meant the middle seat was blocked unless they absolutely needed it. Nowadays I find a safe haven in Alaska Airlines emergency exit rows, where the middle seats tend to be the LAST given out… and its worked out well. As someone who has spent hundreds of hours in the air, my only saving grace are airlines that put 2 seats next to an exit instead of 3, such as on Alaska and Southwest 737-700s – I then snag what is normally the middle seat, and have open ‘air’ between me and the door. This allows me to put the outer armrest up and as an added bonus, I now have a 2nd tray table for my laptop.

I’ve done every diet out there, I exercise on a regular basis, I’ve tried my best to reduce my sugar intake but my weight has just been slowly weaning off. My office job certainly doesn’t help, nor did spending 5 years on the road working for the airline in sales – which meant sleeping in hotels each night and enjoying their ‘free’ breakfast or finding the nearest fast food since I probably had to be on the road after waking up.

But I still get that ‘LOOK’ from people when I board. That ‘LOOK’ also makes it easy to spot my seatmate during boarding … they’re typically the one looking for their seat and getting wide eyes once they spot me at the aisle or window – knowing I am now their teddy bear for the next 5 hours. Fortunately I still fit in a seat per all of the airline Customer of Size policies, and don’t need a seat belt extender. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to get healthier. I just wish the airlines could offer something better, outside of fighting with the other 50 elites for a free upgrade.

So after reading a story about a 50 year old person who died in Hungary, my brain started getting into creative mode. This passenger had tried to fly back to New York but was denied boarding by 3 airlines because she physically couldn’t fit in the seats, or it took too long to get her in the seats. She got big from a medical condition and was seeing a doctor in her home state of New York for treatment – but she was maybe 5’5″ and 425 pounds. She never made it to New York and passed away in her native Hungary.

My airline job function was always one of creativity, so I’d like to offer my service for FREE to anyone listening: consider a Big Comfort seat. Yup. Something you can sell, and something myself and thousands of travelers would pay for. And the airlines won’t even need to remove other seats to make it work.

The Big Comfort Seat
Those 737 seats I just mentioned, row 16 on Alaska – why not redesign those seats to be 2 inches wider at the armrest? That would give the seat a 19″ width – which is normally plenty for someone who is 300 – 400 pounds. You could also install these seats on Airbus A321 and Boeing 757 aircraft where there is only a set of 2 seats next to the exit door.

FAA rules presently have requirements that exit row passengers cannot use a seat belt extension for safety reasons, so this isn’t a perfect solution. There would have to be a limit as to how big a person could be in these rows, but there are other options.

Many widebody aircraft taper off in the back and end up having one less seat in each row back there. Why not have a transition of 4 seats to 3 seats become 2 rows of 3 wider seats with the same concept? Right now, that’s wasted space.

As airlines have upgraded their business class products, it has left quite the gap between Economy and Business – to the point where most middle and even lower-upper class American’s can’t afford business class. My trip to Dubai last year was in Emirates Business (and First) – would have cost $12,000, while an economy class ticket in a 3 x 4 x 3 configuration hovered around $1,300. That’s $11,000 for more comfort, not something many can afford. However, I’d pay a few hundred for a wider seat on long-haul flights and maybe $100 more on domestic flights.

Unfortunately premium economy isn’t quite the answer as some airlines are doing it with more legroom and some are going even a step further and making them more like business class with enhanced service. Many of us just want more width!

Until the airlines get CREATIVE with an idea like the “Big Comfort” seat, then people like me are just going to have to take sleeping pills or something to numb the pain as we slip into our seats, or start dieting a week before we fly, or not flying at all.

–
Nate Vallier is one of our Cranky Concierges and blogs at EAS Flights.

American continues to leak bits and pieces of its planned onboard improvements, and now we know some more about its planned offering for domestic flights. What do I think? The amenities all sound great to me as a traveler, but I’m not sure they make sense for a domestic fleet.

Yesterday’s announcement was about what will happen on the new A319/A321/737-800 deliveries that will come into the fleet starting next July. These 230 airplanes will replace a lot of the MD-80s, 757s, and yes, the 767-200s that currently fly from New York to LA and San Francisco. Want to see what they’ll look like? Watch the first part of this video:

Now, don’t get too excited. The only thing you see here that will be on the entire new domestic fleet is the coach cabin. There will be Main Cabin Extra (extra legroom) seating in addition to regular coach. Every seat will have full in-seat video (which it seems will not be free in coach) along with a power outlet (which I assume will be free in coach). There will, of course, be wifi onboard.

So what about the rest of those fancy seats in the video? Those are supposed to be for the small subset of A321s that will replace the airline’s 767-200s on the New York to LA and San Francisco runs. American is effectively planning to build its own version of United’s p.s., soon after United has decided to mostly dismantle it.

There will be 36 seats in coach along with another 36 in Main Cabin Extra. Then there will be 20 flat beds in business class along with 10 flat beds in first class (the same seat American will have as international business class). These airplanes first get delivered starting in November 2013. That means those tired old 767-200s still have a couple years left in them.

So what do I think of all this? As a passenger, I love it. I mean, who doesn’t want in-seat video, power outlets, and wifi? Isn’t that why everyone fawns over Virgin America? But the real question is whether or not people will pay extra for all these goodies or if this will shift high dollar business traffic from other airlines. One of those need to happen for this to succeed.

For starters, I’m a little surprised that American is planning on putting in-seat video in every seat. Other airlines don’t seem to think that’s a worthwhile investment. Delta has some airplanes with it, but it has backed off ever since it realized that inflight internet could provide a great passenger experience without such heavy investment in infrastructure. US Airways, clearly an airline with an extreme view on this, hasn’t seen the point of any kind of video for years (domestically). It just doesn’t see it as something that drives ticket purchase on domestic runs. And as frustrating as I find it, just about every other airline seems to think that investing in power outlets is unnecessary as battery life grows.

Second, what about first class on those transcontinental flights? Nobody else sees value in that offering anymore either. Even United is going to just coach and business. Of course, maybe that’s why American has decided to stick with it. It thinks there’s still some demand for it, and now it has a captive audience. But enough for 10 seats per flight? I don’t know. Regardless, American is coming to different conclusions from other airlines that are currently doing quite well for themselves and that should make people wary.

How is it that American is coming to such different conclusions? This is an airline that has long complained about having costs higher than others and is saying it needed to file bankruptcy just to make cuts in those areas. But all of these bells and whistles are going to add costs. Like I said, I love the idea as a passenger, but then again, that’s how I feel about Virgin America’s onboard product. It doesn’t mean I’ll pay more to fly them.

The cynical side of me might think American was cooking up this plan on paper in order to curry favor with those who will determine its fate in bankruptcy; to show that it has some kind of concrete plan. Maybe this won’t ever happen. But I don’t think that’s the case. With deliveries starting next July, things probably need to be finalized fairly soon. Of course, if a merger ends up happening, things can change quickly.

For me, the jury is still out. American is trying to go upscale across the board, matching more of a long haul product offering on the domestic fleet. I’m actually really curious to see if American can move high-dollar market share with all these bells and whistles, when they’re finally installed. It’s failed in that effort before.

Remember More Room Throughout Coach? American made a mistake rolling out extra legroom to the entire coach cabin instead of having a sub-cabin like United because a lot of people just want cheap fares, especially on domestic flights. And with this kind of heavy investment, American will have a lot of cost to cover that its competitors won’t have. That makes it tougher to offer low fares.

As a passenger, I hope it works. But I’m highly skeptical.

Airbus brought out a pretty interesting idea recently that would theoretically make it easier for airlines to charge for aisle seats. How so? It would make them wider. Though I like the thought, I wouldn’t expect to see this on an airplane near you anytime soon.

On the A320 family, Airbus has long touted how the wider cabin allows for wider seats than its main competitor, the 737, in coach. In general, that’s the truth. The standard layout is for an A320 to have 18 inch-wide seats while the 737 is generally 17 to 17.2 inches wide at most. For me, seat width isn’t a big issue. I don’t have much trouble fitting into any seat, and it’s really those with the narrower armrests (like regional jets) that feel tighter even if they aren’t. But for some, this can be a real issue.

Regardless of whether it’s a real issue or not, it’s certainly an issue perceived to be important by some travelers. People say they want more room, and a wider seat would accomplish that. So Airbus has come up with a unique way to give travelers a wider seat without impacting seat density on the aircraft.

The idea is to shrink the window and middle seats by an inch to get them to standard 737 measurements. Then add two inches to the aisle to create a super-wide 20 inch seat. That’s within an inch of a domestic First Class seat width on most narrowbody airplanes. Of course, it wouldn’t be First Class. The legroom and service would be the same as coach. But it would just be wider than a regular seat. Call it Economy Plus: Wide Edition, or something like that.

I can see this being attractive to airlines but I wouldn’t expect to see a huge order coming down soon. Airlines are already quickly finding out that they can charge for regular aisle seats without any sort of physical improvement. So the threshold for justifying the ordering of all new seats is pretty high in terms of additional revenue generation. I’m not sure it can be met. Now, if I were a brand new airline starting up, I might think about adding those seats assuming that the cost to purchase them isn’t much more than the regular set of three. But you know that these would be somewhat more costly because they aren’t exactly standard seats.

Even if I don’t expect that we’ll see a lot of airlines take this option, I do like the thinking behind it. The idea of trying to improve the traveler experience without adding much cost or decreasing seating density is one that has a better chance of success than most crazy ideas out there. While a jacuzzi onboard sounds great, something like this is far closer to reality.

A Preview of EVA Air’s New Flat-Bed Business Class Seats – Conde Nast Traveler
Here’s a look at some pics of EVA’s new flat beds in business class.

Outrage over $100 carry-on bag fee – CNN
I was on CNN to talk about Spirit’s $100 carry on fee, a fee which is so incredibly misunderstood that I’m going to write about it next week. But they made me pull off my glasses (too much glare), and then made some interesting editing choices. Watch it here: