I seem to recall that a long time ago, the airplane seats were bigger, more spacious. I don’t know the statistics of how much the seats have actually shrunk over time. If more recent news is any indication, future plane rides will pack us in even tighter than before.

I thought as I walked through the front of the plane in order to get to our coach seats, wow, the business class on this Airbus 330 look even more spacious than other business class seats I’d seen. I had a hard time distinguishing them with the short glance that I had of the 1st class seats I’d seen.

This brings us to the dilemma of airplane classes. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m jealous of those business and 1st class passengers, there’s so much space, it’s not as hot with fewer bodies packed in, the food is better, and yet I’m too cheap to pay the upgrade fees. Sure, we rationalize it by saying we’d rather spend that money on the things during the trip that we enjoy, but it doesn’t make me feel better when I’m elbow to elbow with my neighbor.

Beta says the seats probably haven’t gotten that much smaller, so that must mean I’ve gotten a lot bigger… which, if I were honest is plainly evident.

SAS GO “Economy”

SAS Plus

For sure though, the class warfare of airline seats has gotten worse, now we have this new “plus” section too. Isn’t it bad enough that we had such disparity between coach and business? Now we have another level to climb in the hierarchy? You can clearly see from the seat trimming alone, that one is better, more “plus” than the other. How ironic right, that some discriminate against plus-sized people and now we discriminate against non-plus seats? There I go ranting again… It’s probably not the airline’s objective to cause a great rift in the cabin passengers, but a result of the airline’s strategies to stay profitable and thereby alive.

I really shouldn’t complain either since the seats on this A330 are pretty comfortable and new, it just feels a little too in-your-face sometimes to have to walk past the really nice seats only to know that my next dozen hours are going to not be as comfy.