| China's airlines expand seating to provide for overweight passengers |
BEIJING, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese airlines are being forced to rearrange their seating as the burgeoning number of overweight Chinese complain about the discomfort of ill-fitting seats.
Passengers have complained that airlines often try to squeeze more seats into a plane in order to make bigger profits.
A source with China Eastern Airlines said the company had imported all its aircraft from the West where people were generally bigger in the past, but now, the company planned to reduce by about 20 the number of seats on the new Airbus 321 to enlarge the seating space. The number of first class seats would also expand from eight to 20, according to the source.
Xia Hongshan, vice dean of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, suggested more airlines re-arrange seats to provide for the comfort of larger passengers.
"China's civil airlines always have empty seats, especially in the low season. So, it is reasonable for companies to think about reducing the number of seats, even though it might not be a small investment," Xia said.
Early this year, a China Southern Airlines aircraft delayed takeoff for two hours because two passengers began fighting in a quarrel over seating space.
Chinese people were becoming more overweight, Wen Weiliang, director of China Health Care Association said.
Without larger seats, more quarrels would certainly happen, he said.
Wen cited statistics showing that nearly 20 million adults in China were overweight. In large cities, the ratio reached 30 percent.
"The Chinese are also getting taller," Wen added.
But airlines are also concerned about the profits loss that seating re-arrangement might incur because aero crafts are usually full during the peak seasons, which add up to roughly one month per year.
So some companies including China Eastern Airlines had adopted a compromise scheme by placing passengers in alternate seats in low seasons.
The airlines have to strike balance their profits with the feelings of passengers, and there is no an easy solution to that, Xia said. Enditem
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