I travelled a lot recently, spending some time in Australia. Whilst in Australia, I drove about 2,800 kilometres. By air, I flew from Jeddah to Dubai to Bangkok to Sydney to Auckland and return (somewhat more than 2,800 kilometres I will agree).
What perplexed me the most about this travel was relative costs and comfort. I am not talking so much about the three classes of airline travel - “misery, misery lite and slightly comfortable” defined by Charlie Brooker in July’s Executive Style Section of the Sydney Morning Herald Online - but rather the costs and comfort associated with cars and aircraft.
Now, the first thing to note is that the space available to the driver in an average sized car, like a Mitsubishi 380, is about the same as the space available to an economy class passenger on an average sized aeroplane like, say, a Boeing 777. That space is about 17 or 18 inches (43 to 46 cms) width.
An average sized car will fit 4 passengers and a driver into those seating areas and costs about $25,000((all prices are in US Dollars)). This works out to an average cost of about $5,000 per seating position.
However, an average sized aircraft, say a Boeing 777-300, costs around $200,000,000 give or take a little and holds around 320 economy class passengers (let’s forget business and first class and crew for the moment). This gives us approximately $625,000 per seating position.
My question is very simple. Why, when an aeroplane’s seating position is 25 times the cost of a car’s seating position, is the aeroplane’s seat 10 times more uncomfortable than the car’s seat?
I can sit in a car seat and drive for 2 hours or so, then stand and walk. Sit in an airline seat for 2 hours and my bum is numb and I feel most uncomfortable.
Surely an airline would be a winner if they equipped their economy cabin passenger seating positions with Mitsubishi car seats instead of the crappy seats they are using now!
