Am I too fat for Ryanair? - size 22

[Weeblewobble2024]

Just as the title says really, I have to fly Ryanair in a few months and haven’t flown with them for about a decade when I was a lot slimmer. I will pay to choose my seat and book the aisle. I have recently fit fine in a Jet2 seat at my current size and don’t need a seatbelt extender but have a feeling Ryanair are a lot smaller. Does anyone have any recent experience? Will I need a seatbelt extender? Will I be able to put the tray down?

(Obviously I’m trying to lose weight in the meantime but have to be realistic about how much can be achieved between now and then.)

I'll see if I can dig around and find a source but I'm pretty sure airline seats it's based on population data slightly more recent than that, but not bang slap up to date - one problem is there's a lead time in designing and certifying seats. Also from memory the current seat size is usually based on something like being adequate for the 95th percentile, so they are definitely not designed to be "adequate" for the whole population.

Anyhow, however Boeing/Airbus/seat suppliers have come up with the dimensions there's finite room within the airframe - the seats are squeezed into a fixed diameter tube (the fuselage barrel)..there's simply no room to fit significantly wider seats without perhaps reducing seat numbers (e.g. going from a 3/3 configuration to 2/3) and that will impact on those all important ticket prices

I get that seats can’t easily be made wider, I’m sure I’m wider than 95% of the population. But I do feel like making seatbelts a bit longer wouldn’t be so difficult to do without compromising anyone else’s safety and would make a big difference to the 5% of us.

Fair point, I've no idea of the background to the current lengths, other than airlines/manufacturers are paranoid about any extra aircraft weight...even/especially weight, even small amounts, that are going to be carried over the whole life of the aircraft.

Like many things in aviation there's a lot goes on behind the scenes and Designing sets/belts etc is quite a complex business:

https://www.aircraftinteriorsinternational.com/features/a-guide-to-airline-seatbelts-and-certification.html

If you want to know what seats used to be like, go to an old theatre to watch a play. Now THEY are small

I flew with Ryanair at size 22. I didn't need a seatbelt extender, and it was ok.

Yes I forgot to mention theatre seats and as you say, if its a Victorian theatre, they're bad, really bad but even places built in the 60s to 80s seem small to me, no where for my knees to go and Im not tall really