A friend of mine passed along a link to a column today from Gregg Easterbrook posted on ESPN’s website. (Click here.) I was surprised to see a pretty lengthy talk about the 787 and it’s impact on the customer, especially from an NFL writer. Even more surprising, it’s a pretty thorough, accurate, and funny piece!
If you’re interested, scroll down about 2/3 of the way down the page until you see the header “Your Seat Assignment Is Coach, But for an Additional Fee, You Can Upgrade to an Overhead Bin ” and start reading from there.
The only flaws I could pick out are the following minor ones:
- He says that after delivery airlines “rip out the interiors, shrink the ‘pitch,’ or fore-and-aft distance between seats, and jam in more chairs, eliminating legroom.” They definitely do not rip out the interiors after they’re delivered. They choose their interiors and have them delivered in the knee-crushing configuration right away these days.
- It’s noted that the 787 “will be pressurized to near ground level,” but that’s not true. He correctly notes that most airliners are pressurized to around 8,000 ft, but the 787 will be pressurized to around 6,000 ft (read this Popular Mechanics article). That may not sound like a big difference, but studies show that human performance doesn’t really start to degrade until you’re above that level and then it starts to drop off rapidly, so there should be a big difference for the customer at 6,000 ft instead of 8,000 ft.
