I happen to fly regularly, and most of the time I glance at the row numbers above the seats trying to find my tiny space while simultaneously not running into the passenger in front of me or getting rammed from behind. Oh, and also doing by best to juggle luggage and a backpack so they don't accidentally smack another passenger in the face who was lucky enough to be seated already.

So, I never really noticed that the row numbers on airplanes are not always sequential. And I bet you may have overlooked this as well! 

Some airlines skip row number 9, others 13. What is going on?

It turns out that some airlines operating in regions where certain numbers have negative connotations may remove those rows from their seating charts and aircraft. Rows 14, 17, and 4 will also be missing from certain aircraft operating in some markets due to their unpopularity. Simply Flying notes that the number 4 is pronounced a lot like the Chinese word for “death,” which is understandably not something you want to see on your next flight. Everything from plane rows to building floors in Asia skip the number 4.

This is also why you’ll see hotels skipping random floors. Sure, polling in the past has revealed that it’s likely that relatively few people care about things like the number 13 appearing as a hotel floor, but the number isn’t zero. Simply removing the number 13 is a cheap way around it.

Sometimes airlines will even skip rows for the most unusual reasons… Such as ensuring the aircraft seating chart must end in an even, round number, like 40 or 50, which the airline considers “standard.”  

So, now that I know there are “missing rows” I'm going to watch the numbers more carefully next time I board a plane to see if I can spot the skipped numbers. And I bet you will too!