This article is published in partnership with Quoraa platform on which Internet users can ask questions and where others, specialists in the subject, answer them.
The question of the day: “Why aren’t airplane seats and windows aligned? Is the engineering so complicated that not all rows can have the same number of windows?”
Windows only exist on board an airliner for psychological reasons. If it weren’t to help passengers feel less anxious, there would be no reason to add the weight of glass or drill holes in an otherwise very rigid metal tube.
You may notice that cargo planes [aussi appelés avions cargo, ndlr] rarely have windows (unless converted from a former passenger-carrying airliner). Airliner designers have put in as many windows as the design allows, regardless of where the seats may end up.
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Second, you may have noticed that the rows of seats aren’t bolted to the floor, but instead sit on rails that run front to back.
Each airline can thus add or delete rows and reconfigure them according to its needs, playing with the distance between the rows (the seats de type «Economy Comfort» are the latest seat spacing revision). Again, this has nothing to do with the location of the windows, which therefore have a fixed and standard position in the aircraft fuselage. It is a purely economic decision.
The two factors combined mean that it’s pure luck if your seat ends up perfectly aligned with a window.
Source: Slate.fr by www.slate.fr.
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