Less room in Virgin's new 'cattle-class'

[NM]

The Boffins that study aircraft crashes have widly stated that rear facing seats are safer than front facing ones, in the event of a survivable crash...........

But facing seats has the added implication of the forward-facing passenger being thrown into the rear-facing passenger.

 

[anat0l]

But facing seats has the added implication of the forward-facing passenger being thrown into the rear-facing passenger.

What if they get everyone to wear sash belts, a la a lot of F suites across airlines now have small spaces between a seated pax and the "bulkhead" of the seat in front, so they need to wear a sash belt just in case of sudden stoppage.

 

[NM]

What if they get everyone to wear sash belts, a la a lot of F suites across airlines now have small spaces between a seated pax and the "bulkhead" of the seat in front, so they need to wear a sash belt just in case of sudden stoppage.

Its not just F seats that have them. CX's herringbone J seats have 3-point seat-belts on the 744s and both A333 and 744 have air-bags incorporated in the J seatbelts. So some things are being done to help passengers survive sudden stops.

 

[dajop]

What's wrong with facing seats?

I've had some extremely unbearable face to face situations with your knees in the knees of fellow pax, and no room to stretch the legs. The worst being on a 13 hr train trip SYD-MEL in 1989 (when I didn't fly much, and even if I did, couldn't have at that particular time).

But even more recently had an extremely uncomfortable 2.5 hr train trip in Italy when the inconsiderate ##$^^# , who was sitting face to face opposite me decided to sit as far forward as possible (one of those seats where the base comes forward), leaving no room for me to put my legs without looking like some perve playing "footsies".

 

[serfty]

Note that on many Virgin Blue aircraft, the seat pitch is not the same throughout the aircraft. So its no possible to make a blanket statement about Virgin Blue having more seat pitch than Qantas. It all depends on which seats are being compared.

It is common that the Virgin Blue seats towards the front of the 737 aircraft have greater pitch than the regular Qantas 737 economy seats. This is partly due to the fact that the exit rows have to be at a fixed position in the aircraft (aligned with the emergency exit door/windows), and evenly spacing the rows forward of the exit row gives a slightly bigger pitch than the rows evenly spacing the rows behind the exit rows.

Qantas regular economy rows seem to be more consistent in pitch throughout the aircraft, as they can adjust the variation in the business class seats.

So score a seat in the front half of a Virgin Blue 737 and you will likely have more leg room than a seat behind the exit rows or an economy seat on a Qantas 737 (with the obvious exception of exit rows, row 4 on a QF 73H and the convertible seats on QF 734s.

It is certainly my experience on DJ that the front rows have more leg room than the rows further down the back.

This be true and here is the thread on this:

http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/com...eat-diagrams-side-by-side-7313.html#post90307

 

[pauly7]

Thinks everyone needs to stop talking facing seats before Virgin gets onto this thread!