<BR> <BR>Ditto on the MD-80 thing. American Airlines has a huge fleet of MD80s. I fly business trips weekly on American into DFW. Over the last two years, American removed seats in coach, therby creating more leg room. Previously my tall frame and laptop were incompatible; worse, when the person in front of me reclined without warning I was subjected to painful abdominal contusions from the dinner tray. But it's much better now--I can use the laptop and the tray is no longer a threat.

I buy my tickets on Travelocity or Flifo. This way, I can choose the type of plane I fly (I no longer base my flights on acumulating mileage for frequent flier accounts--you have to fly a zillion miles before you really get anything worthwhile). That said, It's pretty maddening to find that many airlines use MD-80/90's , B737 or eve B757's on cross-country flights. I notice that American now uses B757's from LAX to Hawaii! (But I hear they've increased legroom on all of their aircraft, though.) IT's pretty funny how the airlines & manufacturers rave about the "high-technes" or economy of the B757. I hate this plane! It's nothing more than a longer B737 which is used for long flights. I usually fly coach, so If I have a choice, I try to select Airbus 320's or B767's. I would have to say the worst possible seat would have to be the middle seat on a middle row of a DC-10 or MD-11 (the middle seat of the "5" portion of 2x5x2 seating.) <BR> -my 2 cents worth.

We had a difficult 10 hour plus flight from Milan last week on American Airlines. Not all of their seating has been increased, that's for sure. We hit a 4 hour delay at the start because of a Malpensa air strike and it was very tense in all aspects. The 8th hour brought us to a full fledged fist fight and it was really, really frightening. Seats were broken and emotions were super hot. One woman was so scared she locked herself in a bathroom. <BR> <BR>In these kinds of close quarters people are viewing things that they just don't want to see. You don't want to know about this one, thank God I only saw little from where I sat. Alcohol and pure discomfort are making it worse. Quite frankly on this flight, you could never get to a bathroom between carts, drinks, snacks and having the seat belt turbulence sign on. My partner was asked to go to his seat twice before he insisted he use the bathroom. It was in the 2-3-2 formation and I was in the middle seat of the three, probably the worst as noted in the above post. I am small and a grown man of almost any size could not have fit his legs into the space provided. I kept thinking about blood clots as I got to feeling almost numb in the leg that was smashed in the overlap of my neighbor's leg (a very large man.) Three children in front of us threw pieces of their pizza everywhere and when we left the plane it looked like the aftermath of a 2 day frat party. <BR> <BR>There were 11 police of different organizations to meet us upon deplaning. The Customs official said to keep our heads low as we had just come from the wrestling flight. I am NOT a person who is easily frightened and my heart was beating so hard for a few minutes while it was happening that I thought I was doing aerobics. The women were yelling fight as they got rolled on and I thought they were yelling "Fire." Honestly, I love to travel but I don't think I can take the long overseas flights any more. People just are made to be herded.

That's supposed to be - People AREN'T made to be herded.