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Reader John asks:

Is it just me, or does it seem like they’ve been restricting each and every year how far the seats can recline?

It’s not just you. But it’s not every airline, either. Yet.

Scott McCartney reports in the Wall Street Journal that Southwest Airlines is standardizing recline across its fleet to 3 inches. Previous recline had been anywhere between 2 and 4.5 inches. Compare this to American, Delta, and jetBlue with 4 inches, United with 5, and Continental with 5 to 6 inches.

I’m always wary of these generalizations, since it seems that the recline, pitch, and width of the seat differ by aircraft type within each airline. A 737 might give you, say, four inches, while a 757 might give you three. (I’m pulling these numbers out of thin air.) On Southwest, however, with their all-737 fleet, it may be easier to standardize.

Whether or not you should recline is a matter for debate. Always look before you lean to avoid crushing any laptops.

Frankly, I’d guess it’s not really necessary for most people to lean back on short flights, say, sub-two hours. As the flight gets longer, the more permissible it is. If you’re sitting in an economy seat with extra legroom, such as Economy Plus or in front of an exit row, go for it. (The irony: Most seats in front of the exit row are locked in the upright position.)

But having one standard recline angle across an entire plane may be inappropriate. I agree with this sentiment:

How close the seats are to one another, measured in “seat pitch” at airlines, should determine how much recline is allowed, seat manufacturers say. “The bigger the pitch, the more recline is possible,” says a spokeswoman for Recaro Aircraft Seating GmbH, a major airline seat company based in Germany.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see public reaction to Southwest’s reduced recline. Will the masses be upset? Or will they even notice?

Over at Wired, friend-of-the-blog John Brownlee shares a lament from his recent trans-Atlantic crossing on Aer Lingus.

I spent last night flying home to Dublin from Boston after a couple sleepless days of last minute drunken excess. I was seated next to a smelly motorcycle enthusiast in leather pants, who did nothing all flight long except stare directly at the seat in front of him without blinking. I found this very disconcerting, and asked him if he wanted something to read. “What ya got?” he asked. And that’s when I discovered that the only book I’d brought with me was Oscar Williams’ seminal anthology, Immortal Poems of the English Language, which prompted him to spend the rest of the flight muttering about me under his breath (”Seat 47H? More like Seat 47 HOMO!”*). Needless to say, I did not sleep well.

How neighborly. At least he wasn’t coughing or vomiting while making slurs. (Or heck, maybe he was.)

The worst I’ve sat next to was the body-odor guy and the chatterbox. I’ve gotten off easy, I realize.

Feel free to pepper the comments with stories of miserable seatmates. Get it off your chest.

Silverjet, the latest entrant in the all-business class segment of travel between New York and London, has done something no other airline has ever dared: imposed mandatory fees to cover the environmental effects of the trip.

Silverjet, which is working with the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, said the exact cost of the carbon charge had yet to be calculated, but was likely to be between £10 and £20 for each passenger.

Expedia and Travelocity recently partnered with third-party organizations like TerraPass to give customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets — monies that go toward planting trees and other carbon dioxide-reducing environmental projects. (If you want to go beyond offsetting your flights, you could also opt for the 8-week “carbon diet.”)

But Silverjet, which just began taking bookings for its service between Newark and London-Luton (flights start on January 25, 2007), is the first airline to require such a charge.

The move isn’t purely charitable. CEO Lawrence Hunt puts it succinctly: “If the airline industry does not do something about [emissions] then it will get regulated to hell by the European and UK governments.”

This might be the start of a trend among European airlines, but don’t expect Asian or American airlines to follow suit anytime soon.

Related:
- Reduced-guilt flying now readily available for online purchase
- Do we really need ANOTHER all-business class airline to London?
- Silverjet IPO enables third London-New York all-business-class airline
- Are open skies dirty skies?
- Silverjet (aff)

British Airways is making it tougher to pick your seat in advance, if you’re not a loyal or high-paying customer. The airline already has a longstanding reputation for limiting the number of seats that can be reserved at the time of booking. That reputation is about to get worse:

To make more seats available at the time of check-in we are reducing the number of seats that can be pre-assigned. This option will be limited to specific groups of travelers. These include families with young children; First class fliers; Premier, Gold, and Silver Executive Club members; and those holding fully flexible tickets across all cabins. […] Corporate customers holding a contract with British Airways will also be able to select seats at the time of booking.

The airline is portraying the change as a customer-friendly change, as they are increasing the availability of seat selection at the time of online check-in. The plan is supposedly “designed to simplify the process of choosing a seat and give all customers more transparency and control of the seating options available on their flight.”

Reducing choices is certainly “simplification,” but not in a good way.

I suppose the new scheme, by allowing more online check-in, is better than waiting to receive a seat assignment at the airport. But in reality, this means that you’re still at the mercy of the seating supply in the 24 hours before your flight. Thumbs down.

Thanks, Matt!

Just a few months ago, it seemed that the trend in airports was to remove power outlets from the terminal area, while simultaneously rolling out services like wi-fi, which, obviously, required electricity. Brilliant.

Thankfully, the trend seems to be reversing. Chris Elliott, in the NYT, reports that airports are wising up to the needs both business and leisure travelers who increasingly depend on electronics to make their time in the airport more livable.

Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport recently converted some of its pay phones into free laptop recharging stations. […] And Eppley Airfield, near Omaha, just wired its snack bar in the north boarding area with new sockets.

Or take Indianapolis, which has gone a step further and gotten a sponsor for their outlets.

Most airports are putting off the installation of sockets until they renovate their terminals, but the awareness of the problem is at least trickling through to airport managers.

But not every airport is on the traveler’s side. Consider the visual evidence, such as these sockets at SFO with locked covers. Obnoxious in their own right: charging stations like this one, which charges $2 per half hour for the privilege of plugging in. What do our $3 to $4.50 per segment landing fees get us, if not the chance to plug in for a few pennies of electricity?

For those looking for free airport power, let me once again plug (sorry) Jeff Sandquist’s Air Power Wiki, the user-built directory of free airport power sockets. Consult it before you spend $2 for a half hour of juice.

Related:
- Power sockets, sponsored by Chase
- New site roundup
- The mystery of the disappearing electrical outlet

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Whenever I travel, I always end up browsing the local supermarkets. It starts with a need, but it ends up being a form of tourism. Some people visit monuments, I visit food stores.

Ever the lush, I tend to drift toward the liquor department, and there are sometimes interesting (though not necessarily good) finds. I’ve got a guest post up at Dr. Vino’s wine blog on Californian wine in German supermarkets and the mystery of the Sierra Valley.

Browse on over and check it out.

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The Cranky Flier points to an innovation of sorts in the world of airline seating: airlines charging for early boarding.

For some time, European discounter EasyJet has operated on effectively the same principle as Southwest Airlines in the United States: No assigned seats, first-come-first-served. But now, EasyJet passengers willing to pay between £2.50 and £7.50 can be assured of being among the first 20 passengers to board. The longer the flight, the higher the fee.

In the United States, Southwest passengers can still assure themselves of a good chance of getting a desirable seat by checking in early and thereby receiving a “group A” boarding pass. (See here for a list of services — some free — which virtually guarantee you a boarding pass in boarding group A.)

European travelers are accustomed to paying for every little thing on the budget airlines, so this won’t be any shock. Asian low cost carriers are right there with them. And most people won’t pay the fee, but for those that are willing to pay, this will be a welcome change.

When Southwest first experimented with assigned seating, I proposed that the airline might able to profit from a compromise, offering assigned seating to a small percentage of flyers who want it (perhaps for a fee), but retaining open seating for the majority of passengers. EasyJet is effectively doing something very similar.

I assure you that Southwest is watching EasyJet’s experiment very closely.

Related:
- A modest proposal for Southwest
- Getting the best seats on Southwest just got harder
- Opening day jitters? Southwest’s assigned seating gets mixed reviews

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If you travel regularly for business between APEC countries (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Viet Nam… and now the United States) you may be pleased to know that the U.S. intends to become a fully-participating member. What this means, in practical terms:

Holders of an APEC Business Travel Card, which you are eligible to apply for if you make multiple trips between member countries, are not required to apply for a visa to enter a member country. Upon arrival, you’re also allowed to use fast-track passport lanes. For travelers to the United States, this apparently means use of the airline crew lane. Bad for airline crew members, good for you.

The Global Traveller is on the scene at his blog. Homepage for the APEC Business Travel Card is here.

Looking outside your window from row 24, the last thing you probably want to see is a crew of airline mechanics using tape to fix a wing flap. But that’s exactly what the video below shows.

As Patrick Smith explains in Salon, this isn’t regular duct tape as found at the Home Depot.

What you see is the perfectly safe and legal application of some heavy-duty aluminum bonding tape, called “speed tape” in the mechanic’s lexicon. Depending on what a plane’s maintenance manual stipulates — according to the dictates of the FAA — certain noncritical components can be temporarily patched with this material, embarrassing as it sometimes looks. It’s extremely strong, durable, and able to expand and contract through an extreme range of temperatures.

So tape on planes is okay. Bondo, not so much.

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Reader Julie writes:

I’m looking to buy tickets from Newark to San Francisco for the holidays, and Expedia has the lowest price for tickets on United. (Even lower than united.com) Can I upgrade these tickets if I buy them from Expedia? Thanks!

You’re in luck! For travel within the United States, most every airline allows upgrades if the tickets were purchased from online agencies like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, CheapTickets, etc. As long as the booking class is legally upgradable, it doesn’t matter where you buy it.

(The exception: If you bought “opaque” tickets from Hotwire or Priceline, i.e., you didn’t select the airline and/or flight times when you made your purchase, then you can’t upgrade.)

For international tickets, upgrades are generally a little more complicated. Not all booking classes are upgradable, either with miles or certificates. But again, as long as the ticket you buy conforms to the upgrade rules of the airline, then it shouldn’t matter where you buy the ticket. As long as you are buying a “published” fare, you should be fine. (And even then: I’ve upgraded a ticket purchased from a consolidator. But it’s up to each airline to set such rules.)

Buy the ticket from Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, or wherever it’s cheapest. And good luck getting the upgrade!

P.S. In theory, you could buy the ticket from United and invoke their low fare guarantee by pointing to the lower fare on Expedia to get $50 in credit, but it’s probably not worth the trouble…
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Marilyn Adams of USA Today details the U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General’s report on the state of the airlines. Mostly unsurprising: Airlines aren’t consistently following their own published rules and guidelines regarding such things like compensation for voluntarily being bumped for a flight.

Airlines? Inconsistent? Big shock.

But buried in the article, there was this nugget:

Passengers can’t make informed decisions about which frequent-flier plans to join because airlines don’t explain policies or report annual frequent-flier mile redemptions in a consistent way, the report says. It recommends DOT consider new rules to standardize airlines’ public reports of frequent-flier mileage redemptions.

Whoa, now! That would be news.

The rules of these programs are indeed often byzantine, but more importantly, it’s hard to know, just by looking at the rules, how easily you’ll actually get the goodies you’re hoping to receive. For some time, airlines have claimed that award redemptions are just peachy, and that everyone who wants a seat can get one. They generally haven’t revealed whether tickets were being redeemed at the normal “saver” level, or at the doubly expensive “anytime” award level.

It sounds as if the DOT is proposing a level of government oversight over frequent flyer programs similar to the SEC’s regulation of accounting for publicly-traded corporations. The devil is in the details, of course.

But perhaps the threat alone of such regulation will spur the airlines to be more forthcoming with the real nitty-gritty details of their programs.

Take everything I said a few days ago about TSA agents having a sense of humor and happily allowing pie-wielding passengers to pass through security, and throw it in the trash like so many 4-ounce bottles of shampoo. Sigh.

From the always plain-dealin’ Cleveland Plain Dealer (via USA Today):

Overall, operations at Hopkins were smooth, [(TSA assistant federal security director for Northeast Ohio) Rick] DeChant said, but there was at least one unexpected hiccup this week.

“In the last two days, we have taken a dozen baked pies,” he said.

Pie filling apparently is banned from carry-on luggage, too. But the pies didn’t go to waste. They were taken to the airport’s United Service Organizations lounge, where soldiers passing through can relax and eat.

Well, so much for common sense. Cleveland: unsafe for pies. Charlotte: apparently safe.

At least the pies didn’t go to waste, but the TSA’s inconsistent enforcement of rules for carry-on bags is back on full display.

UPDATE November 27: Pies should never have been confiscated, and that comes from the top: Aviation Daily’s Benet Wilson has the details:

[…] at a press conference Nov. 16 in D.C. with TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, […] a question actually came up about whether passengers could carry pies. We all had a good laugh, but Hawley did say that pies could — COULD — be carried past security. He said that his definition of a liquid is what would happen if he put a questioned substance on a table. If it holds its shape, then it’s not a liquid, he said. So pie would not be considered a liquid, he added.

America 2006, summed up in five words: Pie is not a liquid.

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