“Basically, it’s inhumane to make someone travel like that.”
The words are from Amanda Schmidt, an ordinary citizen living (or surviving) another day in the experience of flying. Their complaints could have gone unnoticed, they could have fallen on deaf ears. But he uploaded a video to TikTok. The video went viral and now an airline has had to back down.
The video. A man, a woman and a daughter recording. “It should be illegal.” “What happens in case of an accident?” “I’m getting claustrophobic just watching this.” “Don’t worry, they haven’t made you pay to recline the seat yet.” These are comments that accompany the video uploaded by Schmidt to TikTok and one of them points in the right direction as we will see later.
In the video you can see two elderly people with serious problems traveling comfortably in their seats. Although the feeling is that the video is recorded with the wide angle of the camera, the image itself already produces a certain amount of stress, with the man putting his legs under the front seat.
Click on the image to go to the original video
“It’s inhuman”. Once the video went viral, the company has had to give explanations. In statements by the author to C.B.S. He argued a truism that WestJet, the Canadian company on which the people in the video travel, seems to have forgotten: “if they are selling a seat for a human, a human should be able to enter.”
The video records what WestJet called “densified seating” (something like “densified” seats in a literal translation into Spanish). The company has tried to increase the number of seats on its planes by reducing legroom and front seatback. Now they confirm that they will reverse what they have called “ultra slim line” seats.
“It’s in our DNA”. That is the response from Alexis von Hoensbroech, CEO of the company, who assured that it is essential for them to test new products in a statement made public by the company. These products were, in this case, increasing the seats available in the cabin at the expense of greater passenger comfort.
WestJet has assured that it had a program open to reconfigure its cabins and increase the number of passengers but that the final implementation was pending the rejection or support it received from passengers. They assure that in December the possibility of canceling the project was already studied and that with the feedback received, the final decision was going to be made in mid-February. Now they confirm that they will return to the initial configuration.
Recliners. Among the comments on the video, one of the TikTok users pointed out that WestJet still “did not charge for reclining the seat.” The mention was not accidental and this possibility had been talked about for a few months. In October We learned the company had a plan: If you want a reclining seat, pay more.
To announce this measure, the company noted that it had created a new class of ticket called “extended comfort”, a category immediately above the basic fare that would allow the seat to be reclined. Passengers who did not opt for it or one of the premium services would travel the entire time with their backs completely straight.
The decision raised eyebrows among users and experts such as John Gradek, professor of aeronautical management at McGill University in Montreal, who pointed out CBC that “the imagination of airline marketing managers never ceases to amaze me,” making it clear that the measure was nothing more than a new attempt to raise more money.
More and more passengers. For years, the only certainty is that low-cost airlines have been working to put more passengers on their planes. In his usual controversial tone, Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, He claimed he could deploy planes to travel standing up in a week. And if it was profitable They would not hesitate to find a way to achieve it.
Beyond O’Leary’s bravado, the truth is that there are companies that have been working on solutions that aim for this very thing for years, presenting at aeronautical fairs “seats” to travel completely vertical and barely supported on a kind of stools. An idea that fortunately has not finished curdling very good reviews they have received from the airlines low cost.
Photo | Dillon Wolf and Kiya Golara
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