4. The Disappearance of Legroom
Remember that plush, roomy upstairs piano lounge on the first 747 jumbo jets? The days when the airlines could waste space like that didn't last very long. One way to squeeze more profits out of their planes, the airlines quickly discovered, was to increase the number of seats they could jam into each one. Goodbye, legroom. The squeezing got so bad that it induced a backlash — United announced in August 1999 that it would reconfigure its planes to allow up to five inches of extra legroom in its Economy Plus seating, and American followed suit in February 2000 when it began removing two rows of seats in each of its aircraft, giving all coach passengers an additional three to five inches. Still, cramped coach seats remain the best advertisement for splurging on Business Class.