Flight attendants will carry shoehorns to assist passengers in boarding

[Ombligo]

Yet another reason not to fly.

United will be adding a tenth seat to each row in some of it's 777's flying domestic routes (primarily to Hawaii). Currently each row in coaches nine seats, but by reducing seat width from 18" to 17" and the two aisles by 3" each, the cattle carrier will be able to wedge in another 20 passengers. The current layout is 2-5-2 and will become 3-4-3 when the conversions are complete.

There will be no additional space for luggage, and legroom will be unaffected for the time being.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/uni...31116.html

[space-time]

you know, I was expecting a decline in business travel, now that you can do so much with video conferencing, screen sharing, etc, and especially the travel hassle after 9/11, but man, so many people fly, many of those business travelers, it's like 9/11 never happened and they never heard of video conferencing.

[max]

One of sorriest episodes here, in Houston, was when United took over Continental.
It took United two years to screw up its better acquisition.
It took me two years to dump them completely.
The first year they still flew exContinental planes, with exContinental crews and it was OK,
by the second year the planes were converted, the crews were dispersed or laid off, but I flew on United partners, with an occasional United flight squeezed in between. That was enough.
United is truly the worst airline in US....

[max]

space-time wrote:
you know, I was expecting a decline in business travel, now that you can do so much with video conferencing, screen sharing, etc, and especially the travel hassle after 9/11, but man, so many people fly, many of those business travelers, it's like 9/11 never happened and they never heard of video conferencing.

You cant inspect construction site or a foreign factory conditions with video conferencing....

[numbered]

max wrote:
It took United two years to screw up its better acquisition.

I had the inverse reaction. The merger left Continental executives, Continental IT (the web site was screwed up for two years), arrogant Continental crews (announcements from the flight deck that they were "Continental" crews flying United), arrogant managers and ground staff (United folks could not believe the "we are holier than thou" attitude from the Continental staff), and so on.

It was a Continental takeover of United.

Has not gone very well. Disgraced CEO. Financial strategy (to pay the investment bankers and the former execs) has caused huge problems.

So, yeah, it is United's fault!

[OWC Jamie]

3,4,3 seating is fairly standard on 777-xxxER, A380 coach lower deck and many if not most Dreamliners (JAL is still 2,4,2 on 787 but 3,4,3 on most 777 )).

Often for long haul flights I'll look for 2,4,2 seating just to avoid that 6foot5inch 300pound amazon in the middle seat. Nice if that middle seat is empty though on 3,4,3. :-)

[Racer X]

I miss the old MD-80 series planes with the 3-2 seating. My ex-wife and I always got the 2 seats side. No drama because of others.

[raz]

There's a piece in today's paper reporting that the airlines are shrinking the bathrooms as well. This allows them another whole row

[rgG]

raz wrote:
There's a piece in today's paper reporting that the airlines are shrinking the bathrooms as well. This allows them another whole row

That is crazy. I am a 5'6" woman and not overweight. I am barely comfortable in the bathrooms as they are now. I can't imagine a larger man having to squeeze into an even smaller space.

[GGD]

As the airlines change the seating arrangement to cram more passengers to existing planes, I wonder if they need to do any sort of re-certification of safety procedures like evacuation time and crew training. And do the capacities of the life rafts increase too?