After reports of planes being diverted to throw off passengers fighting over using a device to block reclining seats, Helen Raine investigates alternative ways of staying comfortable with limited space in the air.
Reports surfaced earlier this year of fights between passengers and planes having to divert over the ‘Knee Defender’.
This humble plastic chock fits into the hinge of the pull-down table in front of you. Once it’s inserted, the person in front cannot recline their chair.
That means lots of lovely legroom for the user but oodles of outrage and fury from the passenger in front.
Combine that with being cooped up in an enclosed space and quite possibly a few alcoholic drinks and the results have been explosive.
The Knee Defender has been around for years but it hit the headlines in August, when a United Airlines plane had to divert after a man stopped the women in front from reclining using the device.
The air steward asked him to remove it and the woman in front threw a drink over him, according to the BBC. The airline subsequently banned the device, as have several other companies.
Less than a week later, a French man had to be subdued by a Federal Air Marshal on a flight from Miami to Paris after a row about reclining seats. The plane was diverted to Boston. Then Delta rerouted a Florida-bound plane for a similar incident.
With seat reclining the beef du jour, some short-haul airlines are circumnavigating the problem by installing seats that do not recline at all.
British airline Monarch, which flies to Malta from the East Midlands and London, announced that they are doing away with all reclining seats across their fleet.
With return flights to the UK costing less than €100, most would happily forgo a reclining seat (especially if it avoids a contretemps with a fellow passenger) to fly with the airline. There’s also an option of buying more legroom from around €19 one-way.
Ryanair seats do not recline either, which many passengers view as a good thing.
There’s certainly a case to be made for all airlines following suit on shorter flights. But for long haul, the need to sleep can become all-consuming and being able to recline is more critical.
As airlines have battled to cut costs and hang on to profits, legroom has lost out and taller passengers say they are paying the price.
Help may be at hand for them at www.seatguru.com. This clever website, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor, will give you the lowdown on where to sit to get the most legroom and which airlines have the most space.
You can start browsing by airline. From Malta, one of the main long-haul carrier is Emirates and a search reveals that their seat pitch (a good indicator of leg room as it measures the space between seats) is around average at 79cm for the Airbus 340-300.
For long haul, the need to sleep can become all-consuming and being able to recline is more critical
The airline with the least space is China Southern with just 74cm and the longest is United, with 94cm on their Boeing 757s.
If legroom is really critical for you, it might be worth flying to a European hub and switching to an airline that offers more room.
For short haul, legroom space ranges from 71cm (you might want to avoid Iberia) to 99cm with mainly North American carrier Jet Blue.
Air Malta comes in at a respectable 81cm. Ryanair had between 76 and 86cm depending on the plane used, easyJet 74cm and Air Berlin 76cm.
Larger passengers or people travelling with infants on their laps can also check out how wide the seats are; the differences can be quite large, from a skinny 41cm with Turkish Airlines to a curvy 52cm on United.
You can also see whether they have seat back video, a power socket and Wi-Fi.
Once you’ve booked, put in your flight number and dates and Seat Guru will tell you where you’ll be able to stretch out and how to avoid the seats jammed in next to the toilets.
Seats are colour coded according to how leg-friendly they are. You can also search for flights based on comfort levels.
The site also offers advice, such as the pros of taking the bulkhead (plenty of room, no-one can recline into you as there is no seat in front) and also the cons (your table folds out from the armrest, no storage under the seat in front and horror of horrors, this is often where the babies are, as the inflight cots fit on tables here).
They also rate other factors on board with a ‘Love It, Like It or Live With It’ scale, such as food, entertainment and service.
Wherever you end up sitting, for short haul, it’s becoming almost socially unacceptable to recline, so lean back at your peril.
For long haul, it is worth considering the person in front before you power backwards.
If they are working, you probably need to give them a heads up by announcing it directly to them (if you’re brave) or starting to recline slowly so that they get the picture. You should put your seat back up for meal service.
Don’t feel too sorry for the tall person folded into the seat behind you though. Statistics show that the tall are more likely to earn a better salary.
Perhaps with that extra cash, they could upgrade to economy plus or whatever your airline of choice decides to call their half-way house between cattle class hell and business heaven.
But think twice before you suggest that. You don’t want the flight diverted for a mid-air altercation.