THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE Is never the nicest airline Seat

Posted on 11/24/2016

Forget the old saying, it presumably was coined before air travel and/or aircraft that featured three-across seating. Heading home last week I was on standby for the last flight out of town and it didn’t look good.

With an hour to go until departure, the gate agent smilingly – she’d obviously missed the empathy class - informed me there were four other standbys ahead of me, and she doubted any of us would make it. I considered heading for an airport hotel but instead decided to hang on at the gate and keep my fingers crossed.
Sure enough, as departure time came and went there were just four of us still lingering hopefully in front of Little Miss Congeniality. My earlier suspicions about her were confirmed when, rather than happily exclaiming, “Good news guys, you all made it” she tortuously called our names one at a time. My relief at getting what was quite literally the last seat on the plane was however short-lived when I arrived at row 26.
Needless to say, I’d been allocated a middle seat and when I got there it was immediately apparent that the occupants of the window and aisle seats were a couple. At this late stage they obviously thought they’d won the popular game of book a window and an aisle and hope nobody gets the middle: So my arrival was greeted with a few gruff grunts. I also noted that they were both, how can I say, ‘volumetrically challenged’.
When, feigning great sacrifice, I smilingly suggested that, if they’d care to sit together, I would be prepared to take the aisle seat, the husband simply responded “NO!” in a strident tone that indicated there would be no negotiation - and so began the worst flight of my life.
I immediately realized they had two reasons for not wanting to sit together. First it would have been a physical impossibility as they both overflowed into the next seat: I know there were armrests on both sides but I never managed to find them. Secondly they didn’t like each other very much and clearly saw me as some kind of human cartilage to keep them separated. This didn’t however stop them from trading barbs in front of me for the entire flight. The subsequent three hours of purgatory was quite the worst trip ever but let’s face it, being stuck in the middle seat is never very pleasant.
For reasons not immediately apparent, The Global Strategy Group recently conducted a survey on passenger responses to middle seats and found 56 percent of respondents would ‘rather go to the dentist’ than sit there. Another 50 percent said they’d rather wait for an aisle seat on the next available flight and 20 percent would even stay overnight if that next flight were on the flowing day. If I had read this survey before rather than after my experience last week I would quite likely have joined the latter group.
So what can possibly be done to mitigate the horrors of the middle seat?
The obvious solution is to buy a ticket in the front of the plane where such inhumanities do not exist. You can alternatively try purchasing two economy tickets thereby securing an empty middle seat next to your position on the aisle. This strategy can however be fraught with peril.
I once witnessed a passenger protesting in vain that the crew could not put someone in the empty seat next to him because he owned it. He waved the extra boarding pass under their noses and was asked, “So who is Roberts T. Mr.?” When he pointed out the obvious that it was him he was told, “But you already have this seat, so technically you are a no-show for the other on.” I won’t bore you with the incredulous details of the comedy central dialogue that followed but the crew had ultimately their way and seated a standby passenger in what one wannabe lawyer crew member unforgettably described as, “the de facto unoccupied seat”.
To improve yields Air Canada has worsened the middle seat problem on its long-range Boeing 777 fleet by reconfiguring the economy cabin to 3/4/3 across seating: Previously when it was 3/3/3 there were three middle seats – now there are four! As icing on the misery cake, this also means the seats are narrower at 43 cm versus 47, the pitch is three centimeters less, aisles are narrower and more people are trying to claim the overhead space. Other than that it’s just great!
One slightly positive sign that some airline somewhere is at least aware of the problem comes from an unlikely player – an ultra low cost carrier in the US.
Frontier Airlines has taken the, at a glance, radical step of actually widening the middle seats on its Airbus fleet from 46 to 49 centimeters. And no, they do not plan to charge for the extra space but on closer inspection that may be because they are simultaneously shrinking the seat pitch – altruism comes at a price one way or the other!
So next time you find yourself facing the horrors of a middle seat, whether it is with a gate agent, a flight attendant or an aisle seat occupant the best solution is actually a solution – nothing works like tears. This may be tougher for a gnarled male traveller than for a woman but open displays of emotion are generally know to bring success… Especially if the story is spiced with a little white like, “I think I may have food poisoning and I don’t know if I can get to the bathroom quickly enough from that middle seat.”
Or on second thoughts, just cough up the extra for at seat up front!