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"Bob (not my real pseudonym)" wrote in message
...

Our city buses have way more leg room.

These days in domestic travel, Boeing narrow-body jets have seats that are
17 inches inside the armrests, and Airbus offers 18 inches. Some wide-body
jets still have 18-inch coach seats, but even in planes as big as the Airbus
A380, airlines are shoehorning 17-inch seats in coach.

Even several decades ago, 17 inches was considered too small. And that was
before people got bigger. A 1950s Harvard University study of New England
passenger trains concluded that the minimum acceptable seat width was 18
inches. Taking their cue from the study, Boeing and other aircraft makers
designed many planes with 18-inch seats.

But some planes ended up with less because of economic and aerodynamic
issues. Boeing designed the 707 airframe at 148 inches wide in 1954, needing
the narrow body to give the plane the speed and range to fly coast-to-coast.
Boeing stuck with that for the 737 and 757 jets, despite complaints coach
seats were too narrow, because widening aircraft adds weight and drag and
makes the jets more expensive to fly. The 737 in particular was designed
originally in the 1960s for short trips, so tight seating was an acceptable
tradeoff to make the plane economical for airlines. Later versions of the
world’s most popular commercial aircraft had better wings and engines for
longer range -- and still the same 17-inch seats. And there’s been no
accommodation for widening passengers.

United Airlines currently offers a 2,700-mile, six-hour and forty-minute
flight from Boston to San Francisco in a 737-900. I think I'll pass...