Flying Public Finally Fights Back

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After a wave of pushback, American Airlines said Tuesday that it would not reduce the distance between economy seats on some of its new airplanes to make space for higher-priced seats near the front….American Airlines said in a statement Tuesday that it “received a lot of feedback from both customers and team members” about its plans to squeeze the pitch by one inch on those seats.

“It is clear that today, airline customers feel increasingly frustrated by their experiences and less valued when they fly,” the airline said.

I would provide my own interpretation of what this “feedback” was like, but this is a family site. Let’s just say that “increasingly frustrated” and “less valued” would more accurately be translated as “boiling with rage” and “treated like pieces of shit.” Oops. Family site. Make that “treated like flying fecal material.”

Anyway, at least we seem to have finally gotten a quantitative assessment of how far people can be pushed. American’s plan was to reduce legroom from 30 inches to 29 inches, and that was the final straw. So I guess 30 inches will now become the industry standard. For most of you, this actually doesn’t matter much. For us tall folks, it’s pretty intolerable. It’s one reason (among several) that I avoid flying at all costs these days.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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