Several months after announcing a cabin refresh featuring economy seats that don’t recline, WestJet is backtracking amid a public outcry about insufficient legroom.
The carrier, Canada’s second largest, had previously said that the seats helped “preserve personal space.” But many passengers disagreed, criticizing the economy seating on social media as cramped and pain-inducing.
WestJet had planned to reconfigure some of its planes by narrowing the distance between one row of seats and the next, a measure known as seat pitch, to 28 inches from about 30 inches. The move would have allowed an extra row of seating on planes. On Friday, the airline said it would return the economy cabins to their previous configuration.
Alexis von Hoensbroech, WestJet’s chief executive, said in a statement that the airline had tried seat pitches that other airlines around the globe use to keep fares low.
“As an entrepreneurial airline founded on making air travel affordable to Canadians, it’s in our DNA to try new products,” Mr. von Hoensbroech said. “At the same time, it is just as important to react quickly if they don’t meet the needs of our guests.”
WestJet isn’t alone in its efforts to adjust seating to fit more passengers and sell more tickets. Back in 2010, the budget carrier Spirit Airlines installed seats that didn’t recline. Frontier Airlines advertises its seats as “pre-reclined so no one can recline on you!” Other carriers, including Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, have experimented with slimmer seats.
FlyersRights, an airline passenger consumer-advocacy group, has long argued that the government should adopt minimum seat standards. In a 2022 petition to the Federal Aviation Administration, the group argued that airline seats have shrunk over the years even as passengers have grown larger and planes have become more crowded. Airlines have steadily reduced average seat pitch to 31 inches from 35 inches, even as low as 28 inches, the group wrote.
“At some point, seat pitch, seat width and other seat dimensions will be too small that it will harm passenger health and safety,” the group wrote in its petition.
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Christine Chung is a Times reporter covering airlines and consumer travel.
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