Flying into Chicago

As I was flying into Chicago Wednesday morning the pilot took us out over lake Michigan and looped the city prior to going in to land at O'Hare airport. I was in a window seat on the side of the plane nearest to the city as we banked and did a big long turn.

I've always liked how things look when you're up in a plane, but I really enjoyed the circling the city. I wish I had a camara with me. I found this photo on the web though that is similar to the view, although I think we were at a tad lower altitude as we circled. The view reminded me of the video game Sim City too.

Also on the way up I noticed that most of Illinois is "brown" right now. It's all farmland and though the crops have been planted in the fields, there's not enough green sprouting up yet to stop me from just seeing the dirt.

Airline seating design

I'm a big guy and every time I've been on a plane I've wondered why seating isn't staggered somewhat to allow more shoulder room. Basically the seating design in airplanes seems poorly optimized to take advantage of the space in the cabin.

Click on the image below to enlarge the image of what I'm talking about.


The image on the left shows current standard seating with everybody's shoulder bumping into each other, and the variation on the right shows a proposed staggering of the seating to free up space. (Yes it's supposed to represent an airplane ;-) )

This doesn't even consider potential staggering in the "up and down" dimension but there is opportunity there also.



I saw another variation of this theme that prompted me to make this post, but this variation sits some people forward and some people backwards.