Dear airline seat designers,
We frequent flyers are a sore bunch. Plane seats cause so much pain I’d even give up my 70% dark chocolate in exchange for better seats.
For some silly reason, most seats have a bump at the top that pushes your head forward. If you’re 5’10, that bump probably fits nicely into the curve of your neck. The rest of us? We’re in for some pain.
That bump puts your head in the chin-forward posture. I call it the Plane Pain Push. It pushes the weight of your head away from properly supported alignment with the spine. It can cause sore necks, headaches and even shoulder pain for days after the flight. That bump on the seat could cause even more grief than finding out your luggage ended up in Anchorage.
What we need are adjustable neck supports that can slide up and down to the appropriate height for the passenger. The seat backs should be flat and not push shoulders forward, and they should keep the wing arrangement at head height to support nodding off without crumpling your neck.
In the meantime, I’ll have my eye mask handy to keep my melatonin levels high.
Yours in soreness,
Heather Tick, M.D.
PS: Can you speak to the snack people and get them to stop feeding us such high glycemic snacks? They just make us all irritable in the end.
