By torturing coach class passengers, airlines are able to sell wildly overpriced first class seats to people who have the money to afford escape. This is not a good situation. One possibility is for government to require minimum levels of service, for which airlines may compete with their pricing of fares. However, before leaping to regulation of that sort, let’s try just requiring disclosure of the level of service. Customers will know what they are buying at what price. Seat space is the most important thing being sold, so that ought to be the first thing disclosed.

The best way to disclose seat space is to specify the percentage of the traveling population that will fit in the space provided. Imagine a seated passenger reading a magazine. The passenger needs the volume that his body and magazine occupies, plus the volume between his head and the magazine, plus a quarter inch on either side of his body and arms, plus an inch in front of his body and legs. No extra space is needed below and in back, where the passenger is in contact with the seat. For any particular passenger, the space required is defined.

There is a statistical distribution of dimensions for the flying public. The FAA can establish the numbers and require that the airlines to use them for setting standards. The military uses similar human statistics for the ergonomic design of all sorts of military equipment. The technology is conventional.

For any airline seat space, some percentage of the population of fliers will fit in the seat space. In a small commuter-aircraft seat, perhaps only a relatively few adults will fit comfortably. In a first class seat on a jumbo jet, nearly all travelers will fit fine. Imagine we have 10,000 travelers in a representative assortment of sizes. If 90% of them, 9,000 of the 10,000, fit in the seat space, then that is a 90% space. The rating is objective and is easy to relate to, yet it takes into account seat width, knee space, head room, and everything that relates to the size of the space. Passengers will be able to consult charts to find their size, or then can just try different sizes to find what is adequate.

Aircraft may have four hundred seats or more. Thus if the spaces are at the 90% level, then 30 or 40 of the passengers on such an aircraft will not be well-accomodated. This suggests that the percentages might be translated into letter grades, where an A+ seat accommodates 99.9% of passengers, A 99%, A- 95%, and so forth down to, say, F at 20%. However the grades are assigned, with percentages or letters, airlines should be required to specify the level when offering the sale of the seat, and subsequently include the rating in the ticket or confirmation.

The purpose of the proposed system is to encourage competition relative to the space offered. We would like airlines to compete not just for the lowest price, but for the lowest price for, say, an A ticket. A tickets should cost more than B tickets and quite a bit more than F tickets. If passengers knew what they were paying for, I think they would be willing to pay reasonable prices for reasonable space. Now, some airlines offer a little extra space, usually extra legroom, for an extra $50 or $75. However, it is difficult to judge what the extra space will mean to you. Having an objective rating system would help the individual evaluate the potential purchase.

Space is not the only parameter for comfortable travel. We could have rating systems for everything from available food quality to expected restroom waiting time. However, space is the main thing that airlines sell. It is not weight; weight variations per passenger amount to about $15 per hundred pounds. Space is what costs the real money. It is therefore the logical starting point for consumer metrics.