Letters to the Editor
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How about seats in which you can actually sleep?
I can sometimes, kinda sorta, curl myself into a configuration that would enable me to sleep in an airline seat. I cannot sleep in a sitting position, so I have to perform contortionist feats in order to fold myself in such a way that I can sleep. Luckily, I am flexible - but how hard would it be to design a seat that folds all the way out so that a passenger can actually lie down? Lots of people sleep on planes. Especially considering that the only way to get a non-delayed flight is to leave at 6am.
I'm taking a redeye flight in a month, and I am already shuddering in anticipation.
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what about (ick) lice?
Seems like every week I get a note from school (middle class suburban elementary school) that some kid has lice. Everyone gets them. Everyone I know seems to have a kid or a friend's kid who has had them... then the flurry of lice treatments, washing, cleaning... every TEXTILE in your house. Especially beds, pillows, HEADRESTS. Kids give them to each other by trading hats, batting helmets in baseball, HEADPHONES, anything that goes on or touches a head can spread lice.
I saw those new fancy seats, and even the older ones, and thought, what a perfect transmitter for headlice. It's only a matter of time before there's a major outbreak on an airline. Won't THAT be great for the bottom line?
I'd like to see airlines be as diligent about disposable headrest covers as they are about disposable cups or paper napkins.
From someone who had to spend an entire weekend washing everything on hot and vacuuming.
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my wish list
Great column this time! My wish list:
-- a container for trash in each row, or personal containers for trash (a paper bag on a hook would do.) Drives me crazy to sit there with trash in my hand, waiting for collection, and I cannot bring myself to drop it on the floor.
-- Even if you can't do video for each seat, how about good audio with lots of channels of podcasts, music and whatnot? Save money (or even make a little) by selling cheap headsets, or letting people bring their own with a standard plug.
-- YES to the cup holder and seat redesign. I honestly think I'd be more comfortable on the padded equivalent of a straight-back chair that didn't recline at all.
-- Given that most airlines don't serve food any more in coach, why not come up with a tray table that is slightly smaller but adjustable to accommodate both the very thin (as you said, those who have to REACH) and the fat, who wind up with the current standard tray balanced on their abdomen, tilting downward? Make them just large enough for the footprint of a standard laptop.
-- Power outlets at each seat. Granted, I can't talk on my phone but it would be nice to RECHARGE it. Or my ipod. Or my laptop.
-- Distract me with GOOD smells. Any chance of a deal with Cinnabon to get them to pump the cabin full of that odor they use to sell buns at the mall?
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Fab article!
Now why, oh why haven't the carriers made these changes long ago? We're not asking for 24 carat faucet handles in the bathroom - we're asking for simple stuff, just like Patrick Smith suggests.
I fly once or twice a year at the most, usually my long journey include one domestic leg followed by a second leg to Northern Europe. In the 18 years I've crossed the Atlantic since arriving in California, I have travelled on various carriers and to various hubs and things have not improved - to put it mildly. Nowadays it's a matter of getting from point A to point B without going nuts from sleep deprivation.
It's almost an insult to have business class on the same planes as economy class - or sardins-in-a-can-class as I prefer to call it. You walk past the good seats to the back with the cheap seats - it's like a theater if you entered from the stage. They pull the curtains so the poor slobs can't get a peek at the first class passengers.
Only comfort is: if we go down, it's not like the Titanic with most of the poor on lower deck and the rich on the upper deck - we all go down together.
It is amazing what regular folks put up with - things that those with money would never put up with. And that includes crammed airplanes. Well, you say, if they take out seat to make more room then prices will go up. I could be wrong, but I think people would be willing to pay more if they had decent seats, decent food, etc. I know I would. Not hundreds of dollars more, but more.
Of course, with jet fuel prices going into the stratosphere commercial aviation may soon be a thing of the past, at least for regular folks. It may once again become something only the rich can afford just as it was in the early days of commercial aviation.
Maybe I should learn to sail like my ancestors the Vikings - sans motor - that may soon the only way I'll have a chance to visit the old country.
P.S. I pity the flight attendants - so much for glamour: they are merely hardworking waiters/waitreses in the air instead of on the ground.
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Leg room matters
I'm 5'8 and I've had people's seat backs on my knees. I'd like a better pillow and side head support so I can sleep.
Movies are a necessity. Run cartoons for 9 hours straight and my active 8 year old will zone out and watch them. Otherwise, a hour into the 9 hour flight and I am repeating, Don't swing your feet (and kick the back of the guy in front), don't put your tray table up and down, up and down (kind of the same as kicking).
I've long thought that airlines should have tv programs in 200 different language that show how to fill out customs forms, the workings of the seat controls, bathroom, airport diagrams, explanation of what the arrival hall looks like. Because flights from, say, Frankfurt to Boston often have people who've connected from some other flight and need help. Given the limited info the programs would have to show, the memory wouldn't take a lot.
The airline knows whether your bag got on the plane the minute it takes off. Why not let you deal with it on board, fill out the forms. Because nothing is a bigger pit than standing bleary-eyed at 2 am (by your internal clock), watching an empty luggage carousel with steadily ebbing hope, while on the other side of customs, your family wonders where you are and if you made it onto the plane.
If the plane is late, let us know before we get off the plane if we've missed our connection or have plenty of time to make it. I've run through JFK, banging my luggage into everyone's shins only to find that my connection is delayed and I could have strolled. And I've been stuck in a mile long line at the ticket counter when a whole plane of people missed their connections.
Sell pay-as-you-go short-term sim cards at the airport so we can use our mobile phones in the US without either signing up for a two year contract or paying outrageous roaming charges.
Free booze anesthesizes the misery of cattle class. Offer more of it.
Please no piped in scents. Fill the plane with fresh flowers if you want perfume, Bake bread, but don't assault our noses with any 'room fragrance.'
Oh, and luggage carts are free everywhere in the world except the US.
I like the Aeroflot (Tupolev/Illyushin) seats that fold flat, so that if the seat in front of you is empty, you have a place to put your feet.