The recent spate of fights between airline passengers over reclining seat backs and the use of the Knee Defender is symptomatic of the overall state of customer satisfaction with the airline industry. People will accept being treated like cattle for only so long, especially when they are paying for the privilege.
The issue of the Knee Defender came to the fore when James Beach, a Denver businessman used the device on a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Denver. The $22 gizmo clips onto the seat-back tray tables and prevents the seat from reclining.
Beach installed his and got to work on his laptop. The woman in the seat in front of him complained to the flight attendant that her seat would not recline. Beach was told that use of Knee Defender was against company policy and to remove it. When he complied, Beach says the woman slammed her seat back almost damaging his computer. Beach then shoved her seat back upright to reinstall his Knee Defender, and she threw her drink on him. There have been at least two more such incidents in the last couple of weeks.
The flight crew diverted the aircraft to Chicago where Beach and the woman were removed from the plane. Neither were arrested.
They should have been – and seriously fined. CNN quoted an aviation blogger as saying the diversion “cost United Airlines about $6,000 per hour.” Worse, that childish spat inconvenienced an entire plane-load of people and may well have cost them money, too.
But beyond bad behavior, there is a real issue here, one that affects and applies to all airline passengers. As Ira Goldman, inventor of the Knee Defender told CNN, “What the airlines are doing is, they’re selling me space for my legs, and they’re selling you ... the same space to recline.”
He is right about that. And that is just one example of where the airlines are headed. Addressing this issue, The Denver Post reported Sunday that Southwest and United airlines have cut the space between rows by an inch on some aircraft to squeeze in an additional six seats, and that American and Delta have made similar moves.
Jeff Price put the seat-back situation in context. An aviation and aerospace science professor at Metropolitan State University in Denver, he told the Post, “I have more personal space on a New York subway car than I have on a commercial plane. You’re going to spend the whole flight toughing the person next to you. The whole concept of personal space is gone.”
Of course, that comes on top of charging for checked bags, Internet access, in-flight films and just about anything consumable beyond water. And then there are the routinely canceled flights with which Durangoans are so familiar.
The pattern of leaving passengers stuck in aircraft parked on the tarmac got so egregious that Congress stepped in to limit how long those waits could be to three hours. Three hours? What other industry could treat people that way and survive?
Congress is unlikely to intervene in the seat-back question. A more probable idea is that more airlines will follow the lead of Spirit and Allegiant and simply use seats that do not recline. That will not solve the knee-room situation, but it should end the fights.
A longer-term fix might include federal minimum standards for personal space. It could also involve an anti-trust question sometime before the airlines merge into one mega-carrier.
Ultimately, however, the answer lies with passengers who can and should demand better treatment. At least in that regard, these recent incidents offer some hope.
