Seat Pitch

I keep reading about seat pitch on other threads so thought would start a new one. We can only go to Florida every year if we fly by the cheapest flight (We have to go during school holidays as I work in a school and this is always a more expensive time to travel). We usually end up with My Travel, this is OK for most of us but my son is tall and last year could hardly fit in the seat, spent most of the flight with his legs in the gangway, had to keep moving them when anyone came past, or the stewardesses rammed their trolleys into him. This year he is even taller(6ft 5ins short body long legs). My point is he cannot help being tall and even if we could afford to upgrade him I have been told that if we want to be together everyone in the party has to upgrade and we just could not afford this.

Lyn

Lynn I have heard that Trvael City who fly to sanford ahve a system to cope with this and their upgrades can be as cheap as a Virgin flighht.
I have no experience of this but perhaps someone has better information???

Lyn
could you not ask for a bulkhead seat or a seat by the emergency exits, both of which will give more leg room.

I have the same trouble on charter flights, although I'm an inch shorter than your son.

The best advice I can give is to get to the check-in desk early and ask if there are any medical seats available.

These are normally the seats by the doors that tend to have a lot of space around them for wheelchair access. If there are no wheelchair bound passengers booked onto the flight they allocate them to other passengers. So if you get there early and specifically ask, you can get lucky.


Mike

Where are these medical seats located on the planes and do you hve to pay extra for them?

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by mikewj
I have the same trouble on charter flights, although I'm an inch shorter than your son.

The best advice I can give is to get to the check-in desk early and ask if there are any medical seats available.

These are normally the seats by the doors that tend to have a lot of space around them for wheelchair access. If there are no wheelchair bound passengers booked onto the flight they allocate them to other passengers. So if you get there early and specifically ask, you can get lucky.


Mike
[/quote]

Mike,

Sorry to dispute this but medical seats are NEVER by the doors or emergency exits. This is aviation law because people sitting in these areas HAVE to be able bodied in case of an evecuation.

You can request bulkhead seats which are not directly adjacent to door/exits.

My advice would be to contact the airline at time of booking and request whichever seats they have for this particular problem - charter airlines normally charge a small fee eg: £25 or something similar. Put your requset in writing and get a written conformation if possible.

There's a thread here with a link to the seat pitches for all airlines http://www.orlando-guide.info/forums...?TOPIC_ID=8034

Just been through this with MyTravel/Airtours.

I'm 6'6" and have D.O.A. in both knees and various other places, we flew charter with Thomas Cook from Newcastle last April and were told by Travel City we all had to upgrade as well, we paid £99 each for the Premair upgrade to 34" seat pitch which was worth the extra money.

This year our charter flight is with MyTravel using Airtours, after being told by our local MyTravel call centre that we should be able to upgrade to Premair I phoned Airtours main office this morning and was told this would be difficult as there are no Premair seats on our flight at all!, it's a 767 with 30" seat pitch (criminal!!!!). Best they could do (as I had put a medical request in through MyTravel when we booked) was to pre-book row 15 seats behind the 1st bulkhead so nobody could recline onto my knees!, no chance of getting an exit door seat, as Julie says above these are not available for medical request passengers.

Our choice of carriers is US Airways, 34" seat pitch on the A330 Airbus from Gatwick to Orlando which even I can fit into, luckily they were very good and gave me bulkhead aisle seats so I could keep my legs straight out in front of me for most of the flight. The difference in price isn't huge, for 5 of us in December it's just over £1500.

I should say that D.O.A. isn't "Dead On Arrival" but Degenerative OsteoArthritis just in case anyone was getting worried :D

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by phaedra
Just been through this with MyTravel/Airtours.

I'm 6'6" and have D.O.A. in both knees and various other places, we flew charter with Thomas Cook from Newcastle last April and were told by Travel City we all had to upgrade as well, we paid £99 each for the Premair upgrade to 34" seat pitch which was worth the extra money.

This year our charter flight is with MyTravel using Airtours, after being told by our local MyTravel call centre that we should be able to upgrade to Premair I phoned Airtours main office this morning and was told this would be difficult as there are no Premair seats on our flight at all!, it's a 767 with 30" seat pitch (criminal!!!!). Best they could do (as I had put a medical request in through MyTravel when we booked) was to pre-book row 15 seats behind the 1st bulkhead so nobody could recline onto my knees!, no chance of getting an exit door seat, as Julie says above these are not available for medical request passengers.

Our choice of carriers is US Airways, 34" seat pitch on the A330 Airbus from Gatwick to Orlando which even I can fit into, luckily they were very good and gave me bulkhead aisle seats so I could keep my legs straight out in front of me for most of the flight. The difference in price isn't huge, for 5 of us in December it's just over £1500.

I should say that D.O.A. isn't "Dead On Arrival" but Degenerative OsteoArthritis just in case anyone was getting worried :D
[/quote]

I wonder how my friend travels..he is 7ft 2"........[msnscared]

Julie, I'm not going to argue with your knowledge of planes, seats and all other things in the air, cos you used to work (do you still ?) on the things. [msnsmile2]

I thought that they were medical seats because that's what the woman at the check-in desk called them a few years ago. Whatever they're called, they certainly give the taller traveller a bit more legroom.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:
I wonder how my friend travels..he is 7ft 2"........[msnscared]
[/quote]

Chrizzy, does he go in the hold ? [msnsmile2][msnsmile2]