Many people are superstitious. Some people that fly have a lot of superstitions. Some want to board at a certain time or maybe in a certain order. Some people never want to be the first one to get on a plane or maybe they don’t want to be the last. There are all kinds of superstitions that people follow but most of them revolve around the use of the #13.
There are actually way more now that do have row #13 and there is even one airline company that have some planes with and some without.
Since they were bringing passengers to a gambling state they wanted to avoid passengers feeling any kind of bad luck.
There are actually many more airlines that DO offer a row #13 than don’t.
“On board Lufthansa aircraft correspondingly the twelfth row is followed by the 14th. The attentive passenger, however, will also notice the absence of row 17. The reason is that in Italy and Brazil, 17 is regarded as unlucky.”
They once said that “Alaska Airlines was already operating the 737-700 and 737-900 when the decision was made to start operating the 737-800s. Due to cancellations by other airlines, Alaska was able to practically buy the first couple right off the assembly line. However, this compressed time frame meant Alaska was not able to spec out [design] the cabin as would have normally happened. To keep the layout consistent, they continued to order new 800’s without a 13th row, but not because of any superstition.” And there you have it.
In 2005, they responded, “Apparently someone a long time ago (they) thought we shouldn’t have a row 13. We have let the row numbering system persist, especially since we don’t want to go through the expense of renumbering rows on about 600 aircraft.” That makes perfect sense as it would be a very costly project.
What does one do in these cases? If you have to be somewhere, you have to be there.
If they are seated in row #14 that could actually be the 13th row in the plane. What do you do in that case? Is it alright because it’s simply not labelled as #13?
