Southwest announces wider seats, but others are shrinking
If you’ve been waiting all your life for a wider plane seat, Southwest Airlines is finally heeding your call.
The Dallas-based low-cost airline announced this week its plan for new seats in its Boeing 737-800 and 737Max jets in 2016. The seats will be 0.7 inches wider.
Yes, you read that right — 0.7 inches wider.
The seats will be the largest on any Boeing 737 aircraft, according to Bloomberg. In addition to the width change, the seats will offer more under-seat storage, an adjustable headrest and “improved” cushions.
“The new aircraft seats are the widest economy seats available in the single-aisle 737 market, and offer a unique design that gives our customers what they asked for — more space,” Southwest’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer Bob Jordan said in statement.
That’s a big difference from another announcement this week: Airbus unveiled Thursday their new 11 seat-per-row A380 superjumbo jet in Hamburg, Germany. The seats, arriving in 2017, will no doubt look and feel a lot tighter than their planes curently have.
Here’s the @Airbus 11-abreast A380 cabin mock up. 3-5-3 config. Yup, it’s coming. #PaxEx pic.twitter.com/yeZ0dvYDNI— Jason Rabinowitz (@AirlineFlyer) April 14, 2015
The annoucement comes with a trend of long-haul jets shrinking seats to hold more passengeers, similar to the Boeing 777, commonly flown by United and American Airlines.
Contact Kristen DeSilva at 702-477-3895 or kdesilva@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @kristendesilva