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Saturday, October 21, 2017

The Airline and The Jockey

The airline configures its seats for horse racing's Jockey because "Economy" is the ultimate space allowed for 300 paying passengers. The airline starts its business case for how much it costs to fly one mile which could be the distance around a horse racing track. This all starts with selling the most number of tickets for lowest price in order to drive this aviation horse across the sky. 

An airline assumes every passenger is a Jockey, fitting into a 30" x 17" x 48" cube. An airline can haul 340 dormitory sized refrigerators on every flight in that space, because that is number of tickets it needs to sell while sucking up the average passenger's expense account. The passenger can't complain because the flight is so expensive and they are so "average". 

Aviation builds a wide body aircraft for eight across seating, but airlines need nine across seating for its own purposes. A proposed airplane is built for ten across seating but the airlines push back wanting eleven across seating. The airplane maker comes up with a blended wing body for 20 across seating but the airline insists 17.2" inches across is needed for each seat. 

The airplane maker goes 300 feet long and the airlines insists it needs 10 more rows of additional length for its needs. Passengers are heavier and taller than the average Jockey. It becomes the passenger's problem they were born an average human.

The airline does a study and the findings are astonishing from Wikipedia:

"Jockeys must be light to ride at the weights which are assigned to their mounts. There are horse carrying weight limits, that are set by racing authorities. The Kentucky Derby, for example, has a weight limit of 126 lb (57 kg) including the jockey's equipment. The weight of a jockey usually ranges from 108 to 118 lb (49 to 54 kg).[3] Despite their light weight, they must be able to control a horse that is moving at 40 mph (64 km/h) and weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg).[citation needed] Though there is no height limit for jockeys, they are usually fairly short due to the weight limits. Jockeys typically stand around 4 ft 10 in (147 cm) to 5 ft 6 in (168 cm).[3]"

Airlines dig deeper and find that Jockeys make up only .000001 (340 Jockeys is the answer) of the traveling public's US population and prefer 1st class when they travel. 

1st class has a 80" pitch by 24 inches wide across the seat. The cabin ceiling is a full 10" inches higher in first class. The seat cost $1,200 compared with $199 in economy. The pizza eating economy passengers loves its Jockey sized seat as they fold-in at the shoulders making room for another pizza eating football fan going to Pittsburgh, PA.

The airline makes room for 16 Jockeys in first class just in case, while increasing the number of seats in economy by making each economy row with only a 30" pitch and thus it adds two more rows. The airline could carry 290 passengers after-all while having a first class for Jockeys only.

A second study comes out and reveals wealth is not correlated to the human size. In fact economy passengers eat more calories than first class passengers. The airlines business team insist on 30.5" pitch recognizing this study has a valid point and is doing everything it can for the profit/loss team at the airline. 

The new airline commercial features an excited high school age female cheer-leader type sipping on a sippy cup in economy featuring a big smile. There are no 200 pound plus people in the scene. The actors guild only sent Jockeys and family members for the photo shoot.

The viewing public response was "immense". The commercial earned a "CLIO" (caps off) at the annual show. The airline promptly filled 240 economy seats and 16 first class seats for the aspiring ATM models or Average Types with Money.

The engineers at the airline said the airplane was tail heavy and couldn't take-off! An airline board meeting was quickly called and they reconfigured first class to the tail area and economy over the wing. The front of the airplane was delegated for its sippy cup storage. 

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