Which Airline Seats For USA – Europe (Economy Class)?

Korean Air A380 Economy Class Cabin

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A little over a month ago, when Emirates launched their 615-seat Airbus A380, I wrote a blog post called Airbus A380 Challenge – Which Airlines Have The Most Spacious Economy & Premium Economy Products and that started me wondering about the seats provided by other airlines in other aircraft.

The thing that caught my interest when writing the Emirates A380 post was that, despite the huge number of seats they’ve put in their densest A380 variant, the seat pitch and seat width afforded to the passengers is still better than that provided by a lot of airlines using the same aircraft. And that got me wondering if any other airlines had managed to pull of the same feat.

The routes that I fly the most are the Trans-Atlantic routes (TATL) and most readers of this blog seem to spend an inordinate amount of time over the Atlantic so it makes sense to concentrate on airlines flying TATL routes for now (I may extend this to other routes if it looks like it would be worthwhile).

tran-atlantic-flightsImage from GCM

Airlines & Assumptions Used

  • I selected what I consider to be the most frequently used airlines for TATL travel.
  • I have only examined the seats in wide-body aircraft.
  • Where one airline uses a number of variants of the same aircraft and where the variants have slightly different seats, the smallest dimensions have been used (this doesn’t make that much of a difference but I thought I’d mention it before someone tried to correct me!)
  • All dimensions have been taken from SeatGuru – I know they’re not always the most reliable but I don’t see them being materially incorrect and they’re as reliable a source as any.
  • All dimensions are in inches.
  • I have rounded the seat dimensions to the nearest half-inch.
  • All comparisons are for the basic Economy Class cabins. Cabins like United’s EconomyPlus or American’s MCE have not been included.
  • Air Canada has a 777-300 sporting a 2-class configuration where the seats have dimensions of 32″/18.5″ (according to SeatGuru) but, as I cannot find any mention of this on TATL routes I have excluded it from the charts
  • American Airlines 777-200 aircraft are in the process of being refitted with new cabins. In the interest of keeping these charts relevant for as long as possible I’ve use the new seat dimensions here.

Seat Pitch Comparison

What is seat pitch?

Seat pitch refers to the space between a point on one seat and the same point on the seat in front of it.

seat-pitchChart of Seat Pitch by Airline and Aircraft (Click to Enlarge)

Airline-Seat-Pitch-Europe-USA

The first thing that strikes me is just how uniform the airlines are. With only 3 exceptions (out of 74 entries) all the airlines offer a seat pitch of between 31 and 32 inches on all their aircraft.

  • If you like legroom you should avoid AirBerlin’s A330’s and Austrian’s 767-300 – both have a horribly small seat pitch of just 30″. As AirBerlin has no other widebody offering and as Austrian’s only other wide-body aircraft offers a seat pitch of just 31″, you may wish to avoid these airlines altogether if leg room is important to you.
  • The Turkish Airlines A340-300’s have the greatest set pitch at 33″
  • Of the major airlines, American Airlines, British Airways, Delta, KLM, Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic all offer a maximum of just 31″ seat pitch on all their aircraft.
  • Both Air France and Finnair offer a seat pitch of 32″ on all their wide-body aircraft. While Finnair doesn’t yet use its A350 aircraft on TATL routes it is interesting to note that they specifically decided against installing seats with a smaller seat pitch.
  • The aircraft with the consistently best seat pitch is the Airbus A340-300. Of the 7 airlines (of the ones selected) that fly this aircraft, 6 offer a seat pitch of 32″.
  • The aircraft with the consistently worst seat pitch is the 767-300. None of the airlines offer a seat pitch over 31″ on this aircraft and one offers just 30″.

Somewhat surprisingly (at least to me) the airline that comes out best out of this is Air France as they haven’t yet stooped to offering a seat pitch of lower than 32″ on any of their 6 wide-body aircraft types. Finnair comes second for similar reasons…although they only have 3 wide-body aircraft types (one of which isn’t flying TATL yet).

Seat Width Comparison

Chart of Seat Width by Airline and Aircraft (Click to Enlarge)

seat-width-chart-TATL-airlines

The thing that jumps out immediately is the sea of red in this chart – the number of airlines offering aircraft width a seat width of just 17″ is almost scary.

  • If you’re a person of size stay clear of American Airlines! If you’re seated in their regular economy cabin there’s no escaping from 17″ wide seats regardless of which aircraft you fly.
  • Lufthansa isn’t much better than American with 3 of it’s 6 aircraft types offering 17″ seats and the remaining 3 offering 17.5″ seats.
  • The aircraft with the consistently best seat width is the Boeing 777-200. Of the 8 airlines (of the ones selected) that fly this aircraft, 3 offer a seat width of 18.5″ and one offers 18″. Only one airline, American, offers 17″ seats on this aircraft.
  • Air Canada appears to have a pretty generous offering with only one aircraft type having the horrendous 17″ wide seats. With two 18″ offerings and 1 18.5″ offering Canadians appear to have it good!

Bottom Line

Clearly there’s more to an aircraft seat than just it’s dimensions but, as things like comfort are subjective I’m going to stick to concentrating on seat pitch and width.

If you were picking your airline based on seat dimensions alone you’d probably have to pick Air France. If you steer clear of routes operated by their 777-300 you have a good chance of a half decent seat. If you fly on one of their two Airbus products then you’ll fly in one of the roomiest seats across the Atlantic (although that’s very relative!).

If you were picking your route based on seat dimensions (who would do that?!) you would probably choose whatever route Air Canada operates with its 777-200’s. With a positively gargantuan seat width of 18.5″ and a reasonable seat pitch of 32″ is the best choice out there.

American Airlines is the ugly duckling out there with no redeeming features in Economy Class. All seats are 17″ wide and all seats have seat pitch of 31″ so it’s just as well they have a world leading loyalty program to….oh……..

To be frank, with the exception of Air France and the ever consistent Finnair (all aircraft with 32″ seat pitch and 18″ seat width) the airlines come out of this looking pretty bad. 17 inches is just way too narrow for a long-haul flight and yet so may airlines offer little else.

It’s been an education wading through all these figures and I’m seeing a few airlines though different eyes. I suspect there will be a lot more Economy Class travel for me in the future and these figures will, in part, decide what airlines I’ll be flying. It doesn’t look good for American!

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