These standing airplane "seats" may be tomorrow's economy class

People seem to think this is coming to America. This is for indentured overseas contract workers flying from Southeast Asia to Dubai and such. The ones that get their own terminal, out of sight of the showpiece passenger terminals. Airlines like JetStar and so on.

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Well that injected some frightening dystopian reality into my day… :sob:

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Just the safety aspect makes these impossible to implement. The space between the rows wouldn’t be enough for evacuation. They would likely need to staff an additional flight attendant for the extra seats, empty or not. Flight attendants also need to be able to see over the heads of the passengers in an emergency. A plane is certified to carry a certain number of passengers, largely based on evacuation times, so “packing them in” isn’t really feasible. Spirit, Ryanair are operating their planes near max capacity already.

Related but off topic - reverse seating has been shown to be safer in accidents, but hasn’t been used (besides the club seats on old Southwest 737s) because of a heavier seat and passenger comfort.

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Thank you.

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Where am I supposed to put my drink?

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That does seem like an oversight.

With “seats” like this, a good strategy would be to get drunk good and proper before boarding, and sleep it off during the flight.

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Prices could be lowered further by picking a certain percentage of passengers at random, processing them into biofuel, and selling of their luggage. Customers can buy add-ons on a point system that would progressively lower their individual chance to be processed in that manner.

Now, where’s my million dollar job in airline consulting?

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I get deep vein thrombosis from just looking at those chairs.

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People seem to be very price sensitive when it comes to flying. Make these seats $1 cheaper than a full seat and they will be the first to sell out.

Not to anybody who has to fly a lot, like my wife does! Because she spends so much time in the air, and has already had knee replacement surgery (both knees at once, because that’s just how crazy she is!), she has started to demand Business Class on any flight longer than two hours, and Economy Premium (Economy Seats, but with significantly more legroom & Business Class perqs) on overseas flights.

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@NickyG - actually, Cory Doctorow beat you to it. He wrote a humorous SF story called “Ninja Air”, where a Ninja comes into your bedroom the night before your flight, blowdarts you, takes you & your luggage to the airport where you’re stacked like cordwood in the cabin - then when your flight lands, the Ninja takes your body and your luggage to your hotel, puts you in bed, unpacks your suitcases, and blowdarts you the antidote before slipping out the window…

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And when you think about it, there is presumably no overhead locker either, if there’s headroom for normal-sized people to stand at the sides of a 737 or A320.

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We’ll all be in hyperloops in ten years time anyway. Goodbye domestic flights.

My 80-y.o. mom has shrunk to 4’6". She flies several times a year. Do these “seats” slide up and down? If not, she’d have the crotch in her back. What about kids? This is ridiculous.

You’re too late to claim it.

Waistful.

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Jesus wept.

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