Air passengers are feeling the squeeze

“YOU CAN curl up in the big roomy seat...or if you’re a six footer, you can stretch out to your long legs’ content!” So promised a 1960s-era advert for United Airlines, then America’s biggest carrier. Today, most passengers can only dream of such luxury. Aeroplane seats have become ever more cramped—and they are not about to get roomier.

In the 1960s passengers could indeed stretch out at 35,000 feet. Back then the distance between rows—known as seat pitch—was around 35 inches in economy class. But after America deregulated air travel in 1978, ticket prices dropped. Leg room and seat width soon followed. In the past two decades, as airlines have crammed ever more seats onto their planes, the average width of an airline seat has narrowed from 18.5 to 17 inches. Seat pitch has shrunk from 35 to about 31 inches, according to Flyers’ Rights, an advocacy group.