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I can't imagine the government authorities would allow this for at least two reasons: 1. safety. What if the jet needs to be evacuated because of an emergency

by smoody 16y ago

I can't imagine the government authorities would allow this for at least two reasons: 1. safety. What if the jet needs to be evacuated because of an emergency and you're in a window seat and there is a very portly person in the middle seat who happens to be unconscious? Your normal exit path would be blocked and you can't easily climb over the seat in front of you. 2. children and infants: How would a five year old sit in one of these contraptions? How would you take a baby on board?

forinti 16y ago
You can put the babies in little boxes at the front of the plane. At this rate, it will soon be a reasonable idea!
cstross 16y ago
More to the point: Current airliner passenger loads are determined by a mandatory requirement to be able to evacuate the passengers from the hull within a set period. Cram in extra seats, and you're up against the evacuation limit, which is a hard limit dictated by the number of bodies and the number of doors in the fuselage. To work around it, you'd have to cut holes in the fuselage for additional emergency exits and then recertify the aircraft, which means an airline wanting to use these seats will need to buy new airliners certified to carry more passengers. But this higher density seating only makes sense for short haul ultra-low-cost tickets, which are less profitable, ergo ... (And then there's the issue of weight. Passengers weigh, say, 75Kg on average, including clothing. They fly with luggage, another 5-25Kg. A Boeing 737-800 currently has a limit of 189 passengers and a payload of roughly 40,000kg, of which up to 26,000kg is fuel: put more than 189 passengers (18,900Kg by my BOTE estimate above) and you're going to be squeezing right up against Maximum Take-Off Weight unless you reduce the maximum fuel load. Even if there's room in the hull, you're going to have to redesign a lot more than the seats and the emergency exits ...)
- MC27 16y ago
  An alternative option would be to cram the economy class into a smaller space, so they can have more space for premium economy, business and first class seats. That would be useful for routes between London and New York where there's a big demand for business class seats.
  - mayank 16y ago
    No matter what your age, financial status, or physical stature/condition, I really find it hard to imagine anyone riding a saddle with a seatbelt on an already-torturous-in-economy transcontinental flight.
- ouhjygj 16y ago
  Exit in 90sec tests are easy to rig. You either use USAF cadets and lots of practice until you can do it once (Boeing) or accept a couple of broken legs (Airbus) Payload probably isn't a problem - this would be used on 90min commuter hops where a 737 doesn't need to carry it's full 5000nm range fuel load. If you put the seats facing backwards they would probably be safer than regular seats where people either submarine out of the lap belts or smash their face in the seat back in front of them.
pierrefar 16y ago
3. Tall people like me who simply cannot fit in "normal" economy class. Every trip is a hassle trying to convince some deranged check-in drone that the script he/she is following to stone-wall is stupid and wrong.
gigantor 16y ago
The authorities would certainly conduct a focus group review with a random sampling of the population before even considering introducing a plane to North America with these seats in it. Getting a plane off the ground would suddenly take twice as long due to realizing some passengers will not be able to physically fit in a seat due to varying sizes, and not knowing this before the ticket was purchased. I can't imagine how much breathing room your diaphragm has to move with that folding tray. If airlines are run anything like public sector, certainly there must be far more effective ways of reducing costs instead of cutting into the bone.

by smoody 16y ago

forinti 16y ago

You can put the babies in little boxes at the front of the plane. At this rate, it will soon be a reasonable idea!

cstross 16y ago

More to the point: Current airliner passenger loads are determined by a mandatory requirement to be able to evacuate the passengers from the hull within a set period. Cram in extra seats, and you're up against the evacuation limit, which is a hard limit dictated by the number of bodies and the number of doors in the fuselage. To work around it, you'd have to cut holes in the fuselage for additional emergency exits and then recertify the aircraft, which means an airline wanting to use these seats will need to buy new airliners certified to carry more passengers. But this higher density seating only makes sense for short haul ultra-low-cost tickets, which are less profitable, ergo ... (And then there's the issue of weight. Passengers weigh, say, 75Kg on average, including clothing. They fly with luggage, another 5-25Kg. A Boeing 737-800 currently has a limit of 189 passengers and a payload of roughly 40,000kg, of which up to 26,000kg is fuel: put more than 189 passengers (18,900Kg by my BOTE estimate above) and you're going to be squeezing right up against Maximum Take-Off Weight unless you reduce the maximum fuel load. Even if there's room in the hull, you're going to have to redesign a lot more than the seats and the emergency exits ...)

MC27 16y ago
An alternative option would be to cram the economy class into a smaller space, so they can have more space for premium economy, business and first class seats. That would be useful for routes between London and New York where there's a big demand for business class seats.
- mayank 16y ago
  No matter what your age, financial status, or physical stature/condition, I really find it hard to imagine anyone riding a saddle with a seatbelt on an already-torturous-in-economy transcontinental flight.
ouhjygj 16y ago
Exit in 90sec tests are easy to rig. You either use USAF cadets and lots of practice until you can do it once (Boeing) or accept a couple of broken legs (Airbus) Payload probably isn't a problem - this would be used on 90min commuter hops where a 737 doesn't need to carry it's full 5000nm range fuel load. If you put the seats facing backwards they would probably be safer than regular seats where people either submarine out of the lap belts or smash their face in the seat back in front of them.

pierrefar 16y ago

3. Tall people like me who simply cannot fit in "normal" economy class. Every trip is a hassle trying to convince some deranged check-in drone that the script he/she is following to stone-wall is stupid and wrong.

gigantor 16y ago

The authorities would certainly conduct a focus group review with a random sampling of the population before even considering introducing a plane to North America with these seats in it. Getting a plane off the ground would suddenly take twice as long due to realizing some passengers will not be able to physically fit in a seat due to varying sizes, and not knowing this before the ticket was purchased. I can't imagine how much breathing room your diaphragm has to move with that folding tray. If airlines are run anything like public sector, certainly there must be far more effective ways of reducing costs instead of cutting into the bone.