Why Airlines Skip Row 13
(And Buildings Skip Floor 13)

Book a ticket on Air France, Iberia, or Ryanair and open the seat map. You will find Row 12, and then Row 14. Row 13 does not exist. The passengers sitting in what would have been Row 13 do not know they are there — they are in Row 14. The physical seats are identical. Only the label has been adjusted, in explicit deference to a superstition that airlines judged worth accommodating.

This practice, once noticed, becomes impossible to unsee. It is woven into the built environment of modern life in ways most people never register.

Airlines That Remove Row 13

The list of airlines that have at various points eliminated Row 13 from their seat configurations includes some of the world's largest carriers:

The decision is entirely voluntary — there is no aviation regulation requiring the omission. It is a commercial choice, made because airlines have found that Row 13 seats are measurably harder to sell when they exist. Passengers who do not care about the superstition are unaffected by the renaming. Passengers who do care avoid it. Eliminating the row costs nothing and removes a booking friction for a non-trivial segment of travelers.

Buildings and the Missing 13th Floor

The phenomenon in architecture is even more pervasive. The American Institute of Architects has estimated that approximately 85% of American high-rise buildings do not have a labeled 13th floor. The concrete is poured. The steel is set. The floor physically exists — it is simply numbered 14, or sometimes 12A, or occasionally left as an unmarked mechanical floor.

The Otis Connection

The normalization of the omission in American architecture traces partly to elevator manufacturing practices in the 1920s and 1930s. As skyscrapers multiplied across American cities, elevator companies including Otis began offering building owners the option of custom button panels that omitted the number 13. Many owners took the option — partly from personal belief, partly from pragmatic concern that floor 13 office or apartment space would be harder to rent.

Once enough buildings did it, the practice normalized. New buildings that might have included a floor 13 omitted it because it had become standard. The superstition institutionalized itself into the default through a feedback loop between individual belief and commercial practice.

Where 13 Is Not Skipped

Not all buildings comply. The Empire State Building has always had a 13th floor, labeled as such. Many European buildings, particularly in countries where 13 is not considered particularly unlucky, maintain sequential numbering without interruption. Italy, where 17 is the feared number (XVII in Roman numerals rearranges to VIXI — "I have lived," meaning "I am dead"), often skips 17 instead, or neither.

In Japan and China, a building seeking to serve both Western and East Asian clientele may skip both Floor 4 and Floor 13 — a double concession to two entirely different numerological traditions, visible in a single elevator panel.