Modern flying: a triumph in socialism

By B.R.

IS A commercial jumbo jet a more or a less equal place to be than America? An odd question, perhaps, but bear with me. Air passengers can watch the gap between the haves and have-nots widening, as the space contracts between the knees and chin of those in economy class, seemingly by the day. Meanwhile the lucky few at the front of the plane are becoming ever-more pampered, with flat beds, bars and even showers.

Beth Berman, a sociologist at SUNY Albany, passing a bored moment on a flight, decided to calculate the Gini index for passenger planes. The Gini coefficient is a way to measure the statistical distribution of income. The higher the index, the more unequal the society. After some quick back-of-the-fag-packet maths, Ms Berman worked out that:

...in today’s standard U.S. domestic configuration, the 12% of people in first class use about 25% of the passenger space, the 51 people in Economy Plus use another 30%, leaving the sardines—the other 157 people—with 45%. That gives us a Gini index of about 16.

Transatlantic flights, however, are increasingly taking this in-the-air distinction to new heights (ha ha). Take, for example, the below United configuration of the Boeing 777. It boasts seats that turn into beds on which one can lie fully horizontal. (Makes Economy Plus look like it’s for chumps!) United calls this new section of bed-seats “BusinessFirst.”

Unsurprisingly, though, these air-beds take up even more space than a nice comfy first class seat. So if we look again at how the space is distributed, we now have 21% of the people using about 40% of the plane, 27% using another 20%, and the final 52% using the last 40%. The Gini index has now increased, to 25.

America’s Gini index, by way of comparison is 41. So, compared with the US, a passenger plane is a socialist utopia. Of course there are handfuls of caveats here. One reason that airlines are becoming more unequal, as one commenter on the blog counterintuitively notes, is precisely because they are becoming more egalitarian. In the past only the rich could afford to fly, so the amenities on planes were more evenly distributed. Now airlines attract a far wider socio-economic range of passengers, and cabins are configured accordingly.

Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, took Ms Berman's data and ran with it. What, he asked, would a passenger plane look like if seats really were distributed according to real American income? He took a standard Airbus A330-300 with a three-class configuration. It carries 227 passengers: 177 in economy, 42 in business and eight in first class. He calculates: “Economy get about 58% of the seating space on the plane. Business Class passengers get just over 31% of the room, and First Class passengers get about 11% of the space.” So how would a more representative American airline look? Using US census data, Mr Healy continues:

In Air Gini’s three-class layout, some things look familiar and some things are a bit different. Economy Class makes up just under eighty percent of the passengers. Passengers seated there correspond to everyone who makes less than about $97,000 a year. Their share of total income in the US is just below fifty percent, and thus so is their share of the seating space. On the regular airline it was about fifty eight percent, so for these working stiffs the new arrangement is even more cramped than on our ordinary international flight. Economy Class passengers on Air Gini should expect less overhead bin space and more passive-aggressive interactions with the guy in front of them who insists on reclining his seat.

Up with the managers, meanwhile, things have become more compressed, too. Business Class travelers are just over eighteen percent of passengers, but now they get only fifteen percent of the space. That’s obviously still much better than Economy class, but it’s down from the thirty percent or so they had in the original plane. These fliers are almost all in the top quintile: in real-life terms, they correspond to everyone from just below the 80th percentile of the US income distribution up to just above the 96th percentile. Roughly, that’s households making between $97,000 and $280,000 a year. Yet many of them feel a little angry about how little space they have. Strange though it seems, some of those in the seats closest to the front of their section even feel somewhat poor—at least by comparison to those a bit further up the plane. Air Gini understands their situation and compensates them with a complimentary in-flight snack.

What has happened to make Business Class more cramped? The answer is to be found in Ruling Class. Sorry, I mean, First Class. On Air Gini, those eight most-valued passengers—three and a half percent of those on board—get thirty five percent of the available seating space. That’s a lot of legroom. So much, in fact, that as First Class passengers have spread out to take up the first third of the plane, Air Gini has been forced to replace the luxurious Business Class seats in the real-life configuration with still-comfortable but noticeably smaller chairs.

So next time you squeeze your knees into a seat with a 29-inch pitch, you might be thankful for what you've got.