The Spear has been flying recently, and has been struck by
two oddities regarding airline seating:
1.
Why is it that cabin staff sit facing backwards
rather than forwards like the everyone else?
2.
Airlines are sitting on an untapped resource – seats
next to good looking passengers.
Regarding the first point, The Spear assumes that sitting
backwards in a vehicle that is moving forwards at great speed is simply the
safest thing to do, so that one is thrust back into one’s seat upon any sudden decelerations,
instead of thrown forward into the seat in front.
But if it is the safest thing, then why isn’t everyone
sitting backward to the direction of travel?
Do the airlines place a higher priority on the lives of their staff than
of passengers (as they need to lead any emergency response), or is it that that
they are simply at a higher risk as they are flying all the time? And if the logic is that sitting on way or
the other isn’t really going to make a difference if you suddenly hit the side
of a mountain when flying at 800km/hr, then why bother with the differing
seating arrangements?
The only reason The Spear can think of is that the airlines
want the cabin staff to be able to keep an eye on the passengers during the
critical takeoffs and landings while at the same time as being seated. And, people being people, there may be a
passenger or two who they may want to keep their eye on for reasons totally
unrelated to airline safety.
Oddity number 2 suggests that passengers may be willing to
pay a premium for seating next to the best looking passengers. The Spear has often spotted a single
temptress on his flight, perhaps with a spare seat to her side, only to dutifully
follow his ticket in Germanic fashion to the remnant of seat surviving expropriation
by the behinds of his belt-extension-requiring neighbours.
The Spear would happily pay a small premium to be guaranteed
a seat free from encroachment by neighbourly love handles. Also, as a man in the match-making stage of
life, to be given a seat next to a single, attractive member of the opposite
sex would be preferable – a preference possibly worth paying a bit extra for.
Sure, it would take the whole romance thing out of randomly
sitting next to a potentially suitable stranger, and the prospect may not be as
keenly welcomed by single members of the female sex, but really, it is sure to
be a more enjoyable experience than going to a bar or a nightclub and having
drunk guys run lines on them, and it would have to be an opt-in system. It would be about providing an opportunity for interaction more than
anything else.
Just how the airline would determine a person’s physical desirability
though is a tough one. A person’s BMI or
width or weight could probably be a good indicator in terms of ability to stay
within the bounds of one’s seat, but in terms of attractiveness, they probably
wouldn’t have any choice other than a self-assessment, or perhaps nil assessment,
with ‘single and ready to mingle’ being the sole criteria for seating in a
singles section for a couple of extra bucks.
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