Airplane Seating is Accommodating Women’s Physical Biology Less and Less
And it’s absolutely a gendered issue.
As the world is opening back up, many are preparing for travel in the near future. Plenty of travel we can expect will include flying on airplanes.
That said, we’re seeing a disheartening trend as planes continue to be reworked over and over to accommodate more passengers, and thus create more income potential, while reducing space and comfort for passengers.
A study has found, through experiments of seating all women versus all men in airplane seating, that the lowest rate of comfort and accommodation existed when all women were seated. Alternatively, there was 20% more accommodation space in seating when all men were seated.
Mechanical engineer Elizabeth Miller, who took part in conducting the experiment, had the following to say:
“Female passengers tend to be disaccommodated more by seat width because women on average tend to have wider hip breadths.”
Once again, this is a man’s world and women are a second thought.
Just before the pandemic started, I had a 4-day business trip. The experiment above was all too relatable to me.
