Frontier Airlines quietly launched a new feature called "Stretch" on some of their 190s and A320s. You'll get 4 more inches of legroom, stretching the pitch of the seat to 36 inches. That's the good news. The bad news is that this feature is only offered in a few seats (in the first few rows of coach class), and by implementing the extra 4 inches up front, the seats in the back shrink accordingly. Meaning that instead of the 32-33 inches of pitch you used to have, you're now only working with 30-31, furthering Frontier's discrimination against those with long legs.

This "Stretch" seats match what JetBlue calls "Even More Leg Room" and what United calls "Economy Plus." How you get the "Stretch" seats is by signing up for Frontier's Classic Plus membership or by forking out $15-$25 per flight to get those extra inches. This whole idea of ratcheting up seat costs incrementally for precious inches of knee space seems suspect. Does this mean that airline regulations have deemed 30 inches to be the standard "minimum" an airline must provide to seat someone in a pseudo comfortable way? There doesn't appear to be much of a standard, other than the absolute minimum customers will tolerate. Tying a cost to being able to sit without your knees in your chest is definitely capitalistic, but man, it sure blows to be that poor sucker in the seat behind you.