If you’ve never paid attention to seating charts, here is some incentive to change your ways: a putatively real (be warned, it’s a bit raw) customer service complaint from a passenger on a Continental Airlines flight from SF to Houston. His seat was apparently next to the restroom. Aside from this being an extraordinary note (if it’s authentic), it also testifies to some real-world usability issues. Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but still, think about it.

For one, there’s the matter of putting safe, effective restrooms in a plane in the first place. Then, as this passenger correctly points out, there is the business issue of how many seats can be fit into a plane in order in increase the revenue per passenger mile. Finally, there is the less-well-known device of jamming a blanket in the overhead compartment and letting it hang down to block out the aisle-side view (a method relied on by the author of the letter). On a plane, as sometimes with website usability, compromise can rule the day - and the results can sometimes be ugly.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2005 at 2:21 pm and is filed under General, Finds.