Up in the air
Can anyone figure out how they allocate passenger seating on aircraft?
As far as I can tell, it must be a fairly complex data management task, so my hat's off to the person who wrote the algorithm for Air New Zealand.
Tell you why I think so. All sarcasm aside, honestly.
Today I travelled on a plane, I think it was called a Q300, which had 50 seats, as per the diagram.
And you will also see from the diagram which seats were occupied (blue)... it was not a full flight.
I was in seat 6D (shown in red). In the interests of a bit of extra elbow room for me and the person next to me, I thought it would be good to move forward to the vacant seat 5D.
Stewardess Kathy wouldn't allow it. Man, I wish I'd been able to record her reason, but it was obviously a well rehearsed speech.
Basically it amounted to the fact that doing so would interfere with the "trim" of the aircraft during take-off and landing, throwing it dangerously off balance.
Wow! If the plane is that vulnerable to the seating configuration, it's real scary to think the seat allocation software might get it wrong. Eh?
On the other hand, maybe what Kathy told me isn't true.
Maybe she should have said "it is strict company policy for passengers to remain in their allocated seats". Or "my other duties do not allow me the time to evaluate passengers' requests to change seats". Or some such.
Maybe Air New Zealand requires their staff to say ridiculous things to passengers. Who knows. But if so, that's cruel, really, don't you think?
But, as a database developer, I have to consider: If you had to place 18 people within 12 rows of 4 seats plus 2, from the point of view of preventing the plane falling over... how would you do it?
posted by Steve @ 12:49 am
4 comments
4 Comments:
She is quite correct. But if everyone was in the front or back that could be quite a problem. I was once up in the cockpit of an airplane where the autopilot wasn't working. (I did a bunch of work for the airline so they all knew me.) The pilot stated that the flight attendant must be walking towards the front of the airplane as he could feel it.
Also the baggage is put into compartments according to an plan as well. There is software available calculating the fore and aft trim as well as the left right trim of an airplane.
Now if there was only you moving around then it wouldn't be a problem. But other people might want to move around.
Now in your situation if you were to move forward a seat and the person in the row behind you was to move back a seat then I don't see a problem. But that would cause the flight attendant emotional distress.
Tony Toews
I find that very logical, but how about those airlines with no assigned seating? I think the real planning has to be done with the cargo, not the passegners
From what a forensic lab guy told me, assigned seating is really to make identifying the bodies easier in the event of a crash.
Bill
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I can understand that they don't want people moving around willy-nilly. I can see that they want approximately the same weight on each side. I can see that they want approximately even distribution front to back. But to suggest that one person moving one seat forward is going to dangerously unbalance a commercial airliner is utter nonsense.
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