Will this seat be the future of economy class travel?
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(CNN) --
The recline button on airplane seats is so controversial that it's inspired an entire micro-industry of devices to prevent the passenger in front of you from leaning into your space.
There was a time when all airline coach seats had a recline button built into them.
Today, there are seat models that simply do not have that option.
What made reclining seats disappear in some places?
Is it a good or bad thing?
Just because a passenger can recline his seat, should he?
As with many things in the aviation industry, it depends who you ask.
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Let's talk about how the recline works: In its most basic form, there's a mechanism hidden in the frame under the seat cushion that contains a pivot, the cables that connect it to the button on the armrest, and a pneumatic canister that returns the seat to the position vertical.
Seat manufacturers call it kinematics: the parts that move.
For airlines, this represents a cost, first of all maintenance: any type of mechanism is prone to breakage, either due to normal wear and tear or because passengers do not treat the planes with care.
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Second, it's a weight cost, because these mechanisms can add weight to the plane quickly.
Today, the most modern and lightest airplane seats weigh between 7 and 10 kilos per passenger.
Any weight that can be saved means reducing the fuel needed to transport it.
And third, and in some ways most important, it's a cost of disruption, because if passengers fight over seat recline etiquette, flight attendants have to act as monitors, just like the patio. school.
In some cases, passengers have become so unruly that flights have even had to be diverted for security reasons.
every inch counts
Although you can recline, not everyone thinks you should.
Credit: Kumar Sriskandan/Alamy Stock Photo
What if the seats were not reclining?
In the late 2000s, a new generation of highly engineered superlight seats began to hit the market, and part of what made them superlight was that they didn't have a recline feature.
Some marketing genius came up with the idea of calling them "pre-reclined," setting the backrest at an angle somewhere between fully upright and slightly reclined.
At first, they went mostly to low-cost carriers.
These airlines, which usually operate flights of a few hours, are famous for removing everything superfluous from their operations.
One of the first airlines to adopt them was Britain's Jet2, a European package holiday company, which in 2009 chose a pre-reclining seat from then-fledgling seat maker Acro that revolutionized the way airlines think about seats.
The Acro seat, then called Clark and now Series 3, was different in several key ways.
The lack of recline was one of them, but another was the innovative way the seat was sculpted creating a concave “cube” shape said from the seat and back.
From behind, this shape meant that taller passengers could place their knees on either side of the "cube", gaining a couple of centimeters of space.
That couple of inches really matters.
On a single-aisle economy plane, like a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, there are about 30 rows, and the previous generation seats were spaced about 30 inches apart, that is, the space between a point of a seat and the same point of the seat in front.
If an airline can save 2.5 cm of space per row, that equates to 76 cm on the entire plane, which is equivalent to an entire extra row of seats.
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In just over a decade, several seat manufacturers have innovated with pre-reclining seats and other ways to save space.
One of the most highly regarded is the German seat maker Recaro, known outside of aviation for its racing car seats.
In addition to full economy seats for long-haul flights, with recline and drop-down tray, Recaro Aircraft Seating also offers reclining seats for shorter flights.
The rise of pre-recliners
Replacing reclining seats with "pre-reclining" can mean fewer angry passengers.
Credit: Stefan Kruijer/Airbus/p202106006
"The airline can choose a predefined seatback angle position of either 15 or 18 degrees in the seat configuration process," explains Mark Hiller, CEO of Recaro.
"This helps provide more comfort by increasing the seatback angle or meeting special provisions with specific passenger counts."
"The main advantage is more living space, since the recline does not interfere with the passenger's living space. In addition, the low total cost, fewer moving parts in the seat, greater reliability and simplified maintenance, and low weight and cost, by not requiring mechanisms, kinematics, etc".
The special provisions that Hiller mentions are usually what the industry calls "max pax", that is, the maximum number of passengers certified for an aircraft.
There are currently 244 passengers on a narrow-body Airbus A321neo, an aircraft on which some airlines with spacious business-class seats in the front hold fewer than 150 passengers.
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It should be obvious that a 244-seat version of that plane, or even one with 230 or more, isn't going to be the most spacious.
But in recent years, seat makers have found ways to make it seem like there's more knee room: by thinning the backrest, moving the frame out of the way of the knees, and improving shin room.
In recent years, streamlined seats once used mostly on low-cost airlines have made their way to full-service airlines as well, especially as they compete directly with low-cost airlines.
Pre-reclining seats could be an advantage on short-haul flights.
Credit: Adobe Stock
One way they are doing this is to offer economy-plus passengers seats with extra legroom in the front of the cabin, which could have a fuller seat model with recline and AC outlets, at an additional cost, whereas in regular economy it could be pre-reclined and have no connections or just a USB socket.
These cabins are called hybrid, so pay attention the next time you board a plane: the color of the seat fabric may change from row to row, the movable headrest may disappear, or the seat upholstery may change from fabric to leather. .
So, are pre-reclining seats a benefit or a drawback?
I have been covering this industry as a journalist for a decade and a half and flying for more than 40 years.
In the end, I have come to the conclusion that they are positive when used mainly on short-haul flights of a couple of hours, mainly because they avoid possible fights with the person in front and behind.
Long-haul flights, however, are different, and the recline in these seats is here to stay, but with the added bonus of extra shin room developed for pre-reclined seats.
Just be courteous on the plane and look behind you before reclining, recline slowly and smoothly, and put the seat back upright when everyone else is eating, preferably without being asked by the crew.
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