Here’s why some plane seats don’t line up with the windows

Basically, the process of setting up a plane is this: The manufacturer builds planes with windows, and then the airlines themselves decide where to put seats.

There really isn’t much more to it than that.

Airlines make decisions about how many seats and how much legroom they want to give us, and there isn’t much discussion about it between the two parties.

airlines usually disregard those recommendations in favour of their own seating plans, usually so they can squeeze more and more rows of seats into the aircraft and decrease the seat pitch, or legroom, in order to raise more revenue and keep fares competitive.

Tracks on the floor of aircraft cabins allow rows of seats to be pushed closer together or further apart at the airline’s discretion. It is also up to the airline to decide what seating configuration is used, such as a 3-4-3 arrangement, a 2-3-2, or the universally dreaded 3-5-3.

So the reason windows don’t always match up with the seats is usually because the airline has crammed an extra couple of rows onto the plane, probably to make more money, and thrown the perfect alignment of seats and windows out of whack.

So don’t blame the builders, but if you hate getting a crick in your neck trying to look out the window, take it up with you airline!