And Finnair are probably demonstrating the likely direction of travel in that area. Finnair are in the process of replacing all lie-flat seats with non-recline slouch seats that you can lie flat in by shifting your body rather than mechanically modifying the seat. Search "Finnair non-recline" on YouTube, lots of videos, here's one randomly picked[1].
A plane is basically a cylinder. People are normally in the top half, and the bottom half is the cargo area. It has to be pretty close to a cylinder for structural reasons.
By lowering the floor, you get far more space for people, but also far less flat floor area (most of the floor is curved and not easy/suitable for walking on)
I know this is not a direct response but I’m picturing steerage and everyone just pisses off the bunkbeds into the empty, curving bottom of the aircraft below, an open-air sewer in-flight. London experience indeed.
Interesting. Planes used to pretty often have armrests that folded up, so if you were lucky and had a row to yourself, you would be able to do this. I think these days that's rarer due to armrests being fixed and airlines being stricter about seatbelts. Air New Zealand seems to be trying to bring that idea back as an actual product. I think their approach isn't all that bad, as long as the cost for one of the skycouches is about the same as 3 regular seats.
Armrests still tend to fold up except in certain rows. But good luck getting a row to yourself these days. Even getting an empty seat next to you isn't all that common.
Given how much the quality of the cleaning regime varies between airlines, I shudder at the thought of what you might find in, for example, a British Airways bunk bed.
"The airline did not respond to a request for an update before this piece went to press" ... Would not have guessed that aircraftinteriorsinternational.com had such tight deadlines
Which is a pity because it's a very interesting article
To squish more ppl in an aircraft while not creating deal breakers of problems is quite the interesting Problem to solve i think.
Like i would be totally ok to have 50cm heigh bunks like in an uboat, but most ppl would probably get quite anxious in such a coffin.
If you are not thin you cannot rotate in such a bunk or even put your hand on your stomach, or even fit into it.
Dignity -- this is what's forgotten in these designs.
I prefer sleeper trains to intercity buses, even when not needing to sleep, exactly for that: you can travel with dignity. You can sit upright, stand up, or lay down, which you can't do on an intercity bus.
>Dignity -- this is what's forgotten in these designs.
I've flown a 15 hour flight at least a dozen times in economy.
Trust me when I say there is no dignity after 14 hours of trying to get a little sleep with your mouth wide open, snoring loudly, drool coming out and your head lolling onto the person next to you.
When I think of that 15 hour flight the very last word in my mind is dignity.
It doesn’t seem likely any designer is forgetting ‘dignity’… It’s just that revealed preferences show the vast majority of people, even quite well off upper middle class folks, nearly always choose to sacrifice ‘dignity’ in exchange for a lower fare.
I get uncomfortable if I’m on the wall side of my kid’s lower bunk bed, and it’s probably 80cm.
It’s an interesting mental exercise, but honestly I think this madness needs stop. If flying is not profitable enough, then we need to plaster the country in passenger rail.
Taking a night train in Europe, especially if it involves a sleeper car, is absolutely not cheaper than flying a budget airline. (Although it may be if you count saving a hotel room.) But trains generally are not cheaper than flying in much of the world.
At this point, I don't know why they don't just use cargo jets, give us all tranquilizers as we board, and stack us on top of each other like firewood. There doesn't seem to be any level of service that customers won't stoop to accepting in order to save a few more bucks on the fare.
Taking this to the Nth degree, you could optimize the air travel process to an incredible degree. So you make a pod, with tubes for air/water/food(maybe), power for systems/temperature/entertainment, and communications. It's got room for pax and luggage. Big ass airport lobby, you take your sedatives, get in the pod, and then that is it so far as "regular users mucking up the process. The pods get routed to aircraft, aircraft take off, they land, pods routed to lobby, and off go the pax. The pods pass through what's essentially a gigantic dishwasher, sterilizing them, re-dressing with consumables, and the process repeats.
Cabin design could make absolutely maximal use of internal volume, with just a central stem for routing the pods. A smaller subdivision could be reserved for emergencies where passengers need to be de-podded.
I don't know about you, but spending eight hours in a private little pod, sleeping and whatnot, sounds like some sort of personal nirvana compared to a intercontinental coach seat, which - at my advancing age - is getting to be something close to frickin' torture.
I don't have the bandwidth to run numbers on this, but I am betting an airport could probably more than quintuple their load/unload speed. Actually . . shit . . they'd clog their strips really damn quickly unless you did some sort of super optimization on the landing/takeoff/ground ATC. Although you do have the increased capacity per plane . . I dunno. This might be a fun weekend project.
Pods would be much less efficient than current system. You are carrying like hundred pound of pod for each passenger. Would save some on no seats but then lose it to racks for carrying the pods. Also, would need to carry nurses to monitor vitals and revive passengers.
Most important, pods are death traps in crash. Remember the plane in Japan where most of the passengers survived? All of them in pods would have died.
Yeah, the pods got weight, but cabin systems are not in any way weightless, not by any stretch, and you could really strip down the whole interior. Airline seats, just by themselves, are 40kg per.
On the other hand, I defer on the safety issue. Definitely hard to imagine safety improvement here, particularly evacuation . .
> give us all tranquilizers as we board, and stack us on top of each other like firewood.
In the movie The Fifth Element, that is almost exactly what happens to passengers on an interstellar trip. [0] The flight attendant announces they will be using "sleep regulators", where a button on each passenger-pod can instantly make the occupant unconscious.
P.S.: The pods would probably be even smaller if nobody had to care about the opinions of set-designers and actors and camera-crew. :p
It would save a full day of recovering from a sleepless night cramped in a small airplane seat. When staying a week it would effectively add a day, and justify a 15% difference. And night flights are usually cheaper or sometime even the only option for remote destinations so I'd still take it at a 30% premium for some of the shown systems. It looks super comfortable and offers more privacy. (although you may not want people to have too much privacy on a plane)
I honestly love the idea. Remove the cargo bay and overhead bag rack and then stack bunk beds floor to ceiling for tremendous density while still being able to lie down. You should be able to fit way more people in the plane than they do sitting down and do it more comfortably as well.
In folded down beds that you pay extra for. Also it's possible that some portions are too oddly shaped to fit people so that can also be used for luggage.
It isn’t possible to use whole volume since the floor is structural. Also, the wing spars run through the hold. There is also important equipment in the lower area.
It is impossible to use cargo hold. It doesn’t have the escape routes and would be death trap. Plus, the hold is full of bags.
The thing all the examples shown in the article have in common? They are designed for teeny tiny baby sized people. I'm 6ft 4in and I am willing to bet that none of the designs are for accommodating tall people.
Economy class as it is doesn't accommodate tall men properly either on a pure shoulder width basis as it is, with ever shrinking seat widths and economy+ doesn't fix this either. It's also an airplane only thing, vast majority of seats are wide enough for an extra inch or two of shoulder width from the male average.
I'm not tall, just 175 cm, but even for me it looks like you'd have to travel with no dignity. Those 2-level chairs where you have to shunt your body in...
This is happening even in sleeper train designs too: instead of a coupe with 2 sofas with a table in the middle and 2 (or 4) folding berths above them, you're getting non-convertible suitcase to throw your body in, and lay down all the way, probably looking into a phone. No serious window, no sitting at a table, no standing upright.
Plus, for some reason all the stuff is really thick. Like earlier there were cases for bags under the sofa, with wall made a sheet of steel. Now they're desinging them like 4 cm (2") thick, probably of cardboard, and they just eat space (because train cars have no place to expand, they've been at max widths already).
I have to add that a berth with a rectangular wall behind to lean against, is a torture for anyone's spine -- whether for lower back or for the neck.
Good news! Statistically, you're likely to make hundreds of thousands of dollars more just in wages/salary over your career compared to someone of average height, to say nothing of the compounded effect of that extra income if you're savvy about investing it.
Paying for premium cabin seating when necessary ought to be within your means, and frankly seems only fair given the height/wage premium is wholly unearned.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadAnd Finnair are probably demonstrating the likely direction of travel in that area. Finnair are in the process of replacing all lie-flat seats with non-recline slouch seats that you can lie flat in by shifting your body rather than mechanically modifying the seat. Search "Finnair non-recline" on YouTube, lots of videos, here's one randomly picked[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSKb48_zKqU
I want 5-high bunk beds in specially made planes with lower/no cabin floors. Then lay-flat flights can be even cheaper than regular seating.
By lowering the floor, you get far more space for people, but also far less flat floor area (most of the floor is curved and not easy/suitable for walking on)
Turbulence would be interesting.
https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy-skycouch
Which is a pity because it's a very interesting article
Like i would be totally ok to have 50cm heigh bunks like in an uboat, but most ppl would probably get quite anxious in such a coffin. If you are not thin you cannot rotate in such a bunk or even put your hand on your stomach, or even fit into it.
100%, that is absolute nightmare fuel
I prefer sleeper trains to intercity buses, even when not needing to sleep, exactly for that: you can travel with dignity. You can sit upright, stand up, or lay down, which you can't do on an intercity bus.
I’d sleep on floor if stewards let me
I've flown a 15 hour flight at least a dozen times in economy.
Trust me when I say there is no dignity after 14 hours of trying to get a little sleep with your mouth wide open, snoring loudly, drool coming out and your head lolling onto the person next to you.
When I think of that 15 hour flight the very last word in my mind is dignity.
It’s an interesting mental exercise, but honestly I think this madness needs stop. If flying is not profitable enough, then we need to plaster the country in passenger rail.
I like the idea of plastering the US with passenger rail, but I think that'll be very expensive to install and run.
These solutions are targeted at 15+ hour flights - I don't think anyone's building high-speed rail from London to Sydney anytime soon.
Cabin design could make absolutely maximal use of internal volume, with just a central stem for routing the pods. A smaller subdivision could be reserved for emergencies where passengers need to be de-podded.
I don't know about you, but spending eight hours in a private little pod, sleeping and whatnot, sounds like some sort of personal nirvana compared to a intercontinental coach seat, which - at my advancing age - is getting to be something close to frickin' torture.
I don't have the bandwidth to run numbers on this, but I am betting an airport could probably more than quintuple their load/unload speed. Actually . . shit . . they'd clog their strips really damn quickly unless you did some sort of super optimization on the landing/takeoff/ground ATC. Although you do have the increased capacity per plane . . I dunno. This might be a fun weekend project.
Most important, pods are death traps in crash. Remember the plane in Japan where most of the passengers survived? All of them in pods would have died.
On the other hand, I defer on the safety issue. Definitely hard to imagine safety improvement here, particularly evacuation . .
In the movie The Fifth Element, that is almost exactly what happens to passengers on an interstellar trip. [0] The flight attendant announces they will be using "sleep regulators", where a button on each passenger-pod can instantly make the occupant unconscious.
P.S.: The pods would probably be even smaller if nobody had to care about the opinions of set-designers and actors and camera-crew. :p
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UENRVfdnGxs
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/planes-sleeping-pills...
Which also means less airplanes sold…
It is impossible to use cargo hold. It doesn’t have the escape routes and would be death trap. Plus, the hold is full of bags.
This is happening even in sleeper train designs too: instead of a coupe with 2 sofas with a table in the middle and 2 (or 4) folding berths above them, you're getting non-convertible suitcase to throw your body in, and lay down all the way, probably looking into a phone. No serious window, no sitting at a table, no standing upright.
Plus, for some reason all the stuff is really thick. Like earlier there were cases for bags under the sofa, with wall made a sheet of steel. Now they're desinging them like 4 cm (2") thick, probably of cardboard, and they just eat space (because train cars have no place to expand, they've been at max widths already).
I have to add that a berth with a rectangular wall behind to lean against, is a torture for anyone's spine -- whether for lower back or for the neck.
I think we have this idea that something can be designed to accommodate anyone and it’s just wrong
You can’t fly a fighter jet if you’re too tall or too short
Should we change the requirement so that anyone can fly it? No, we just say you can’t fly if you’re this size
Not everything is for everyone
“Sorry sir, your waist is too wide, that’ll be $100 extra”
Paying for premium cabin seating when necessary ought to be within your means, and frankly seems only fair given the height/wage premium is wholly unearned.
seems like the air is pretty thin up there ...