The horrible seating configuration Airbus wants to patent

[Standard_Earl]

Also, WSU has a blue jeans only policy for their students?

[Drew_G]

That’d be better than this, at least you can lie down to sleep in one of those capsules.

[L_Mariachi]

[PhasmaFelis]

@jonbly

Still surprised that the Japanese capsule hotel concept hasn’t had consideration for airline use…

Wouldn’t help. A hotel capsule is much larger than the space alloted for even business-class airline seats. They’re designed to be slept in, after all.

[anon68952647]

[Michael_R_Smith]

As long as it come with pedals.

The good news is that every seat has mains power. Umm, whats the bad news?

edit: my personal idea was to build bunks. By all means keep the space between bunks to a minimum, but being able to lie down makes it easier to sleep, and easier to pass the time.

[Michael_R_Smith]

@cleveremi

As a short person

As a tall person I reckon it would give me only thigh support.

[howaboutthis]

@Michael_R_Smith

As long as it come with pedals.

That’ll be the next patent application: “Fuel saving mechanism for long distance flights.”

[Medievalist]

Wait 'til you see Mr. Garrison’s version.

[andy_hilmer]

@daneel

A380 is certified to carry 853

Incontinent Intercontinental introduces its new innovation to our on-board climate control system: fart-smell scrubbers, so you can spend fourteen cramped hours breathing bleach rather than butt.

[CLamb]

Well, there could be different sized pods. Tall people would be charged more than short people.

[jonbly]

You can stack the capsules 3/4 high, though - all the space above a business class seat is wasted.

[PhasmaFelis]

@jonbly

You can stack the capsules 3/4 high, though - all the space above a business class seat is wasted.

Hotel capsules are bigger than you think. Despite the jokes about “coffin hotels,” they’ve got plenty of room to sit up and stretch a bit. A single capsule is somewhere around three feet by three feet by 6.5 feet.

[Medievalist]

@PhasmaFelis

Hotel capsules are bigger than you think. Despite the jokes about “coffin hotels,” they’ve got plenty of room to sit up and stretch a bit. A single capsule is somewhere around three feet by three feet by 6.5 feet.

That’s more horrifyingly miniscule than I thought, actually, so I hope you’re underestimating. I can’t sit up in 3 feet of space, much less stretch in six and a half!

[Ignatius]

@HMSGoose

If my seat could actually smoothly transition from a sit to a stand position and back again, but be actually comfortable in both positions, my 6’1" ass would be all over that chance to stretch legs / make it easier for window-seaters to get to the aisle but methinks that’s not what’s being proposed.

Even worse, imagine one of those smaller flights that currently has one chair on one side of the aisle and two on the other (or just two on both sides of the aisle). Remember how awful it is to get one of the 2/3rds (or 1/2 as the case may be) of seats that are window seats because you’re crouching down at the same time you’re trying not to be in your row-mate’s seat/space? Imagine if you had to stand up instead. AKA crouch down and press yourself against the window.

@allenmcbride

Why would this be such a bad thing? I’d like to be able to afford to fly more often, and to burn less fuel when I do. I’d sacrifice some comfort for that. Although I wish they’d build horizontal boxes so they could pack us in tighter but also have us lying down.

I flew for business about a year ago on a 777 cross country. Eight miserable hours with no leg room and even the skinny person next to me was not comfy in the width category even when the people on either side of her were in the toilet. We’ve hit the point of diminishing returns where making people more miserable can save any additional money. At this point, we’re just keeping it up because we like being jerks.

@jandrese

The downside is that you know people will need an hour to figure out how to stuff their body into the bunk and make boarding take forever.

Thanks to fees for checked luggage, it already takes an hour to board and even the people with reasonably sized carry-ons can’t find space to stow theirs. At least with a standard bunk configuration, I wouldn’t have some stranger putting their body on me the entire flight.

I like the idea people are floating about patenting some horrid seat ideas to keep airlines from using those ideas. A worthwhile abuse of the patent system if you ask me. If only someone had thought of that fifteen years ago.

[miasm]

Please remain standing until the plane comes to a complete halt and await the opening of the disembarkation trapdoors.

Have a nice disembarkation excretion.

[Jardine]

@PhasmaFelis

they’ve got plenty of room to sit up and stretch a bit. A single capsule is somewhere around three feet by three feet by 6.5 feet.

How is 3 feet tall plenty of room to sit up and stretch? Plus that only gives me an inch above my head and an inch below my feet when laying down.

[PhasmaFelis]

@Jardine

How is 3 feet tall plenty of room to sit up and stretch? Plus that only gives me an inch above my head and an inch below my feet when laying down.

I’m 6’2", but at least half of that is in my legs. I could sit up in three feet, without much room to spare. Lying down, I wouldn’t be able to point my toes, but I could fully extend my legs and spine.

Of course those particular measurements are sized for the average Japanese businessman. Presumably ones targeted at westerners would be somewhat larger.

And even if I was 7 feet tall it’d still be a damn sight more comfy than coach seats, which was my point.

[shaddack]

@PhasmaFelis

Presumably ones targeted at westerners would be somewhat larger.

Not if it is RyanAir.

[fuzzyfungus]

@jandrese

The downside is that you know people will need an hour to figure out how to stuff their body into the bunk and make boarding take forever.

You could always go for a more…literal… take on the term “coffin ship” to solve that one. Just pack each passenger into their Personal Containerized Comfort Pod™ at the terminal and allow the baggage handling infrastructure to transport them to the aircraft and slide each pod into its pod bay within the live transport support infrastructure section of the aircraft.

For optimal compatibility with existing infrastructure, it would be helpful to have PCCP Live Transport Support Assemblies that are mechanically compatible with common ULD pallet and container sizes.

For an LD6, (a ‘contoured full width’, 160x60.4 inches for the top 44 inches; 125x60.4 inches for the bottom 22 inches), let’s see what we can do…

A nominal casket is 84 inches long, 28 wide and 23 high. However, caskets are what you get when you are the guest of honor, so we can probably shave that a bit.

Conveniently, we could get two layers of 4 PCCPs if we trim the length a bit(and airlines hate legroom, so this shouldn’t be an issue). We’ll change the length to just under 80 inches, to allow for the shell of the LD6 ULD and enough slack that the PCCPs don’t get stuck loading and unloading. Width, surprisingly enough, is OK as is, maybe even enough for a little extra elbow room! Height is a problem, we’ll need it slightly under 22 inches; but that just means that the Premium HD in-flight entertainment will look bigger, so no problem there. That’s eight lucky fliers in the top of the LD6.

For the bottom, we only have 125x60.4 inches to work with. We’ll have to accept getting only two PCCPs in, and reserve the rest for environmental support gear and ‘carry on’ baggage.

For an LD7, to cover the freighter case, we again have a contoured shape to work with, 160 by 88 for the top 44 inches, 125 by 88 for the bottom 22. That allows us to use most of what we just worked out for the LD6, but the greater width lets us go 3 PCCPs wide rather than two.

Standardization is all well and good(and allows us to do handy things like transport passengers on freight aircraft, or eliminate checked baggage and use the previously wasted space for LD6s full of paying passengers); but it won’t actually get us the efficiency we desire, although it does do fairly well considering that everyone gets to recline luxuriously.

In the optimal configuration, we must borrow some design insights from the historical experts and look at the noble bomb bay for inspiration:

Since we only need to load and unload PCCPs, not drop them, there is no need for the internal clearance and external doors that allow that. However, the basic concept of a ‘skeleton’ structure that supports as many modules as the plane’s cross section allows is a promising one.

If we add skids or rollers, we can load each line of PCCPs, down the entire length of the aircraft, from one cargo door, each pushing the one in front of it until each line is full. A hypothetical implementation would be a ‘cross section loader’ which accepts PCCPs by conveyor and moves each one to the correct location on the plane’s ‘honeycomb’ of PCCP storage lines and then pushes it, and any already loaded in that line, forward by one unit. At the other end, the operation would be reversed to extract the PCCPs.

Because customers are our #1 priority, each PCCP is to be equipped with a standardized Customer Experience Interface, with power, data, and oxygen feeds that plug into the aircraft’s Live Transport Support Infrastructure to support a premium in flight entertainment experience and life functions.

Surely this plan is genius, no?