It’s a truth universally acknowledged that no-one wants the middle seat. Like absolutely no-one. Some people prefer to go the isle seat, those people would be wrong but they pose some good points about easy access and stretching their legs into the aisle. Other, more sensible and correct travellers, swear by the window seat. I’m tall but I curl up small and I’m asleep within 2 minutes of being on any flight ever. Plus, if you don’t take a window seat pic, did you really fly?
What I have never, ever heard, is someone making a case for the middle seat. The middle seat is reserved for the more easily convinced half of a couple and the people who forgot to check in online when it opened. It’s a wasteland that people on either side of you seem to think is also partially theirs, even though everyone knows that if you were unlucky enough to be stuck in the middle seat you get both armrests. Yes, both. Yet there’s always some cretin who doesn’t recognise boundaries and thinks it’s ok for their elbow to encroach on your space.
You get it, the middle seat sucks.
Brazil’s largest airline, Gol, agrees with me so much, that they’ve announced they’ll be ditching the god awful middle seat altogether on their new non-stop flight from Brazil to the United States on their new Boeing 737s, kicking off next month. Well, they’re ditching them for Premium Economy seats. Sometimes you have to pay for the right thing.
They’ll be replacing the middle seat with a table, granting much-coveted space rarely available on planes. They’ll also be giving those sweet Premium Econ seat a bit of extra leg room, so they’re really hoping people will find the mods worth the extra dosh to offset rising jet fuel prices.
Hopefully, a perfect world will soon exist in which the middle seat is abolished by law, no extra money required.
