Whether to recline or not. That is the question now being hotly debated among air travelers after three flights were forced to land when passengers on board began fighting about reclining seats.
But are passengers really the problem? The real issue may be that most airline seats are not designed to fully accommodate the human body in its various shapes and sizes.
“We are fighting each other, but the seats are not designed right,” said Kathleen M. Robinette, professor and head of the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. “The seats don’t fit us.”
Robinette would know. She is the lead author of a landmark anthropometric survey conducted by the Air Force with a consortium of 35 organizations and published in 2002. It is widely used by seat makers and other designers.
The survey, called the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource project, measured the bodies of 4,431 people in North America, the Netherlands and Italy. The survey collected a voluminous amount of data about its subjects, ranging from height and weight to shoe and bra size. Robinette and her colleagues made 3-D scans of their subjects, allowing for detailed measurements in sitting and standing positions.
For seat designers, the most relevant data came from measurements of people sitting, which included distances from the buttock to the knee, the breadth of the hips and the height of the knees.
The data gave an accurate view of the variations in the human form, Robinette said, but the measurements have not been used
Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Airliner-seats-aren-t-designed-to-properly-fit-5744735.php
