by Donald Wood
Last updated: 6:00 PM ET, Fri August 28, 2015
Years of complaints by fed-up passengers demanding more room in economy class have finally resulted in British Airways increasing the size of its seats.
In a report from Emily Payne of the Daily Mail, British Airways has announced that its next crop of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, to be introduced later this year, will have seats that are .5 inches wider and offer an additional inch of leg room.
British Airways has purchased 22 new 787-9 Dreamliners which will be delivered by 2018. The first aircraft will be delivered in September.
In addition to the new British Airways planes being built with more room, many of the Boeing 787-8 World Traveller airplanes already in the fleet will be retrofitted with the larger seats. The upgrades should alleviate some of the issues with the comfort of the passengers.
A British Airways spokesperson told the Daily Mail, "We've listened to our customers and are reacting to their feedback so in World Traveller on the 787-9 we are increasing the width of seats, which will go up to 17.3 inches, in response to customer feedback. We are also planning to change the width of the 787-8 World Traveller seats in line with our new 787-9 Dreamliners."
Complaining about the economy class is nothing new and certainly not exclusive to just British Airways, especially as airlines continue to implement more and more seats into their designs which would further cut into passengers' leg room.
Hopefully, the customers who complained on sites like SeatGuru.com about the size of the seats will be relieved at the extra space added to the next crop of British Airways aircrafts.
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