I don't understand... I have 20XL's in Fat Albert these past five years...

Me neither. Although I think the "stirrups" broke from being splayed out
one too many times . We stow the backseat sets by putting them on the seat
headrests, and I'll bet my kids simply splayed them out too far one too many
times. The cold may have had something to do with it, too, although these
are our oldest pair, going back to '99, and that part never broke before.

On the other hand, the guy at LightSpeed said he was sending me the "new and
improved stirrups" -- so it sounds like I'm not the only one with the
problem? (And I think I've read about others with this problem here, but I
could be wrong.)

The earpiece material degradation is a known problem also -- the new
cushions are a completely new design. Ditto with the head cushion piece.

As I said before, our newest pair (the Twenty 3Gs) seem to be MUCH more
robust than these old ones that keep breaking. We've only had them since
OSH '03, however, so I'm going to wait at least 12 months before crowing to
high heaven about how great they are...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"