Save for those who get to sit in business or first class, the seats on a plane aren’t the greatest. Unless you snagged an exit row, there’s little to no leg room. The amount of padding on your bottom and back is becoming smaller and smaller. Your ability to recline might still be there…or it might not…or it might be significantly less than what it was 5 years ago.

So yeah…you’re certainly not comfortable in your seat, but hey, at least you managed to get a window seat, so you can distract yourself and look out the window. Well, except the window isn’t really aligned with your seat. So you’ve got one window that’s in alignment with the back of your seat…

PC: American Airlines

And another one that’s an awkward distance away, so you kind of need to lean forward to see out of it. Hello, backache!

This wasn’t always the case, though. There WAS a time, way back when, that the windows and seats on planes were pretty much aligned, and all you needed to do to look out the window was turn your head.

So what happened?

Greed.

Airlines eventually realized that if they made the space between plane seats smaller, they could cram more seats in. They didn’t care how much legroom you had (or didn’t have) – selling that many more seats meant making that much more profits! Of course, airline manufacturers were more than happy to comply, since for them too, more seats sold = more money.

A perfect example of this is one of the versions of the Airbus A380. It has two decks and has a seating capacity of 525 passengers in its standard configuration. But it also has a certified capacity configuration to be able to hold 853 passengers.

Similarly, a Boeing 787-10 can accommodate anywhere from 300 to 330 passengers, depending on an individual airline’s seating configuration choices and flight range.

Either way, the placement and number of windows of that Airbus A380 or that Boeing 787-10 remains the same. It’s just how the seats are configured that changes. And then, depending on that seating arrangement, you may have the perfect set-up of seat vs. window…or you may have no window at all.

Enjoy your flight!

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