Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Travelling to Barcelona for MWC last week I has the misfortune to fly Iberia. In the past I've not had a bad word to say about them, but the new seats and seat layout that they've put in their A320s make travelling on the tube at rush hour with luggage seem positively palatial.

I'd heard reasonably good things about the latest generation of Recaro seats, but what I hadn't realised was that the extra leg room the new cut-in seat backs offered could easily mean an airline using them to pack more and more seats in. I'm glad I'm just about average height - any taller and I would have been extremely cramped. The knee cut-in means that the seat back is in your face - and that there's only a fixed plastic folder at eye level - with no room for a decent sized paperback, let alone all the in-flight magazines and paperwork the airline leaves in for you...

Here's what it looks like:



Except of course when the plane is full, it's a lot lot worse...

What's happened is, of course, that the airline has taken the new lighter, thinner seat, and reduced the actual seat pitch to take account of the increased leg room - and managed to squeeze in an extra row or two of seats (so less luggage space per seat, and more people trying to squeeze down the narrow aisles).

It's like travelling Easyjet - only not as comfortable.