reclining

Canadian airline WestJet has announced that will eliminate the ability to recline standard economy seats on 43 aircraft in its fleet. In this way, passengers who want to put the backrest back they will have to pay an extra to access premium cabins or “extended comfort” seats. What exactly changes. The measure affects less than a third of WestJet’s narrowbody fleet, specifically the Boeing 737-8 MAX and 737-800 from the defunct airlines Swoop, Lynx and Sunwing. On these planes, basic economy seats will have a “fixed recline,” meaning they will not be able to move. The first reconfigured aircraft will enter service at the end of this month, and the remaining 42 will be ready in early 2026. The airline’s justification. WestJet defend the change arguing that half of the passengers who participated in its user tests prefer a fixed backrest to “avoid feeling invaded by other passengers,” according to declared to ABC News. The company maintains that this reconfiguration seeks to “create a cohesive look and feel” in its aircraft, with a renewed design that promises a “bright and spacious environment”, although with less space between seats. What if you want to recline the seat?. Travelers who prefer to maintain the ability to recline their seat will have two payment options. The first is the premium cabin, which will incorporate 12 new seats of the same model as those of the company’s Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. The second is the “extended comfort” section, with 36 seats that offer additional legroom, ergonomically designed cushions and reclining capabilities. Criticisms of the model. The decision has generated some controversy among experts in the sector. John Gradek, professor of aviation management at McGill University in Montreal, qualified the measure of “strategy to raise more money”, according to statements collected by CBC. “The imagination of airline marketers never ceases to amaze me,” said Gradek, who believes WestJet is trying to “create another tier of service that allows them to charge more” for something that has traditionally been standard in the Canadian market. In Europe it is not surprising. On the continent, this practice is quite common among cheap airlines. The main European low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, Easyjet or Wizz Air They have been operating for years with seats that do not recline at all, while WestJet is removing a feature that its passengers took for granted and making it an exclusive feature of premium fares. low-cost Canadian. WestJet, a pioneer in offering affordable fares to Canadian travelers, operates flights to 19 US states, including Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Washington DC The airline justifies these changes as part of its strategy to keep costs down: “We need to be willing to try new products and see how they work for Canadians,” their spokespersons explained. Cover image | Suhyeon Choi In Xataka | “You can’t predict if there will be interference”: why airlines continue to force us to put airplane mode on in 2025

We have a love hate relationship with reclining airplane seats. They are great if you want to nap more comfortably, but if you don’t and the passenger in front of you does, that can be quite annoying. The airlines know this, and are considering their disappearance forever. These seats also impose other problems on airlines. They are more likely to break down, but they also add weight to the seats, something that does not help final fuel consumption. Some airlines don’t even offer that button on coach seats, while seats began to appear in the late 2000s.”pre-reclined“, lighter and that fixed the backrest at an intermediate angle: neither completely upright nor completely reclined. British low-cost airline Jet2 was one of the first to use them in 2009, and British Airways also began using them later for flights lasting less than four hours. Ryanair he charged them directly in 2004 as a measure to make better use of space. The airline then commented how this would allow it to save about two million euros a year. And when it doesn’t try to save for it, it tries to make its users pay more with debatable ideas. Like for example, travel standing. There are many other cases: in 2019 Delta reduced the degree of inclination of its seats from four inches to just two inches for economy class, and from 5.4 inches to 3.5 inches for first class. American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines They also limited reclining to two inches on domestic flights There are a couple of clear additional factors in the partial or complete disappearance of that option. The first, that airlines can eliminate the possibility of choosing reclining seats in economy class and charge those seats as an interesting extra to raise the price of tickets. After all, the future seems prone to the appearance of “premium” middle class seats. Reimagining the airplane seat The other, of course, is space savings. According to CNNif an airline can save 2.5 cm of space per row, that will be equivalent to about 76 cm on a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320. Or what is the same: a whole extra row of seats. There are several attempts to revolutionize the seating arrangement. For example, with double height seats like those devised by the young Spanish entrepreneur Alejandro Núñez Vicente. There are also curious designs that they reposition the middle seatusually the worst rated when traveling by plane or unique ideas —or maybe terrible— like that of the inverted seats. For now, yes, airlines are betting on pre-reclined seats. This is indicated in the aforementioned CNN article, which gives the example of the manufacturer Recaro, one of the firms that is taking advantage of the trend to equip airline planes with their seats. To find out the degree of inclination – in Recaro it is light and ranges between 15 and 18 degrees – the concept “max pax” is used used by industry. That is, the maximum count of passengers that each plane is certified to be able to transport. In an Airbus 321neo, for example, it is up to 244 passengers if everyone traveled in economy class, but when the front part is used for the traditional first and business class seats, the seats are considerably reduced and drop below 150 passengers. . Even so, traditional seats are “slimming” in parallel with the rest of the techniques. It changes the structure and becomes thinner right in the part where travelers have their knees to allow them to be more comfortable. That extra space for the knees, of course, is usually another argument to raise the price of the ticket. The advantages of eliminating reclining seats are obvious on short-haul flightsbut things change with longer flights. Meanwhile, if you are going to travel by plane, it may not be a bad idea to let the passenger behind you know if we are going to recline the seat. Image | Aleksei Zaitzev In Xataka | Obesity is a growing problem, so airlines have opted for a drastic measure: weighing travelers In Xataka | First class seats are a thing of the past. Airlines now want absurdly luxurious business class *An earlier version of this article was published in January 2024