Help with this word problem, I'm confused.

Question

The first aircraft has 69 more seats than the second aircraft. The third aircraft has 30 fewer seats than the second aircraft. If their total number of seats is 372, find the number of seats for each aircraft. 

Answer 1

What Algebra books and teachers recommend is adopting some variable to represent an unknown quantity.

Let x be # of seats in second aircraft; then the first has x+69 seats, as the first sentence tells you.

The second sentence tells you that aircraft # 3 has x-30 seats.

 

What is the total, in terms of the above three expressions? Set that = tpo 372, and solve for x.

 

I hope that you will learn from this, in the sense that you will be able to tackle the nest problem of this kind on your own.