The Ethics of Leg Room

Some years ago in this space I noted that if the airlines ever started to offer an intermediate class of seating - between normal coach and the now-rare business class - that would offer better legroom but no other particular advantages, I would probably buy it. Assuming, of course, that there was enough of a price differential that it was cheaper to get than an actual First Class/Business Class ticket in the first place, of course. This has now happened on a number of carriers, including the one I flew on this week, and I must admit that being able to fly without having my knees pressed up under my chin was a major improvement on my typical coach experience. But I could hear some of the other passengers complaining about it, and it got me to thinking about the ethics of the situation...

First of all, there's the fact that some people can barely afford the price of an airline ticket in the first place, which makes it seem somewhat heartless to start charging them extra for a comfortable seat, or even more to the point, for the privilege of getting off the plane sooner and having a better chance to meet their connecting flight. If we were talking about free champagne or expensive food this would be different, but for anyone over 5'6" or so basic coach seats are uncomfortable, and for anyone over 6' they're miserable - and the ten minutes or so getting off from the front of the plane instead of the back can make the difference between making a connecting flight and spending a night in the airport. Since these seats do not cost the airline anything to create, it seems as though charging a premium (often a high one) for them would be unfair to anyone who actually needs this service but can't afford the upgrade...

On the other hand, while the extra 4" or so of legroom isn't a lot, it does add up after a while. On most  U.S. airlines the pitch, or distance between seats, runs at about 32" - which means that eight rows of "enhanced" economy seats take up enough space to insert an extra row of regular seats. Given those figures it doesn't seem unreasonable of the company to ask the people using those seats to make up for the missing row, which would mean paying an extra 1/8 of a fare each. And since there are only so many rows near the front of the aircraft, there is already a hard limit on how many passengers can sit up front, regardless of how the pricing structure works. If we accept that the airline is a for-profit business which needs to generate a positive return on investment for its shareholders, and that they have already set their prices to the level they believe the market will accept, it would appear that they have no choice but to charge for the premium seats...

Of course, one could quite reasonably ask whether the airlines have an ethical responsibility to their customers to avoid physical discomfort, and if so, whether that responsibility is superseded by their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit, not to mention their (quite real) ethical responsibility to the rest of their stakeholders (e.g. suppliers, employees, customers, and even taxpayers) to run a successful company and stay in business. It's probably also worth noting that persons who can't seat comfortably in an airline seat usually do have some other way of reaching their destination, whereas the airline has nothing else to sell besides air transportation. So let's ask the question:

Does an airline have an ethical responsibility to its customers to provide a comfortable seat, above and beyond the minimum requirements imposed upon them by the Federal government? If so, does that responsibility take precedent over their fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders? Or should they just offer a variety seats at the price points determined by the demand for such tickets, and let everyone make their own decisions about flying, driving, or taking the train?

It's  worth thinking about..