I’ve done a fair bit of international travel over the last five years, Covid notwithstanding, and the thing I most appreciated in an airline was a deep recline. It’s not easy sleeping in flight, but even a couple of inches lower on the recline helps.
This carefully crafted clickbait obviously hit all of my buttons then.
I didn’t need much convincing of a vast corporate conspiracy to buy into the idea that having taken everything else that was good and decent away from us, a decent recline angle would be next.
The most galling part of it?
Calling fixed seats ‘pre-reclined’.
Fetch me my shotgun, if you would.
Apparently its’s all about weight.
Seats that don’t recline have fewer mechanisms inside and therefore weigh less, lightening the load on board each plane and helping reduce fuel costs considerably. “Recliners also require more maintenance, so that is an added cost as well,” McGee says. No-recline models have been flying for years on low-cost carriers like Spirit and Allegiant, who refer to the stationary seats as “pre-reclined,” as they’re molded at a slightly deeper angle than regular seats in the upright position.
The trend then jumped to mainstream carriers in 2018 when British Airways added “pre-reclined” seats to economy cabins to its fleet of Airbus A320neos. Around this same time, major US airlines like Delta, United, American, and Southwest, began trimming economy seat recline to an average of just two inches instead of a roomier four inches that used to be standard.
But I’d be willing to bet the entirety of my increasingly worthless frequent flyer points that not every cent saved would go to holding ticket prices down.
I suspect an elegant sufficiency of the rake-off will end up where it always ends up, in the pockets of CEOs and shareholders.