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New Airbus beds will let passengers sleep in the cargo hold

10 points by bkohlmann 8y ago

richev 8y ago
I love the thought of this...subject to the price!
davewasthere 8y ago
Shut up and take my money! I've often thought I'd love a row of seats to be swapped out for four beds, one on top of another. But being able to sleep in the cargo hold is better than nothing. The airline could earn more than the cargo itself, at the added bonus of using less fuel. Am sure a few of them will be all over this.
gargravarr 8y ago
Considering the price of even business-class bed seats, which when you're looking at them don't look that comfortable, looking at these pictures of rows of comfortable-looking bunks makes me wonder what exactly Airbus is trying to achieve here. Surely these bunks will be hideously expensive due to the space they take up. Safety is also questionable, and since most frustration of air travel centres around what we're always told is 'passenger safety', I'm taking a long look at this. The article mentions the lack of windows, but also fails to mention that humans rarely enter the cargo hold during flights for one specific reason - they are not designed to accommodate humans while in the air. The air is not heated or circulated to the same degree. There are no emergency exits. In the event of an emergency landing, you'd have to get everyone up the stairs and onto the main deck to the exits. Retrofitting this setup sounds like it would need a lot of modifications to the aircraft to accommodate safety, and the costs of this will probably drive up the cost of seats in sections where you don't even get this benefit. I've long thought that replacing the pathetically cramped Economy-class seats with stacked pods like those used in Japanese honeycomb hotels would be a very viable solution - claustrophobic, sure, but planes already are... Similar passenger density, some semblance of privacy due to being all-enclosed, quite safe in turbulence or an emergency landing if you're laying down, and relatively uncomplicated egress. True, for persons with limited mobility it could be infeasible, but it's an option...

10 points by bkohlmann 8y ago

I love the thought of this...subject to the price!

Shut up and take my money! I've often thought I'd love a row of seats to be swapped out for four beds, one on top of another. But being able to sleep in the cargo hold is better than nothing. The airline could earn more than the cargo itself, at the added bonus of using less fuel. Am sure a few of them will be all over this.

gargravarr 8y ago

Considering the price of even business-class bed seats, which when you're looking at them don't look that comfortable, looking at these pictures of rows of comfortable-looking bunks makes me wonder what exactly Airbus is trying to achieve here. Surely these bunks will be hideously expensive due to the space they take up. Safety is also questionable, and since most frustration of air travel centres around what we're always told is 'passenger safety', I'm taking a long look at this. The article mentions the lack of windows, but also fails to mention that humans rarely enter the cargo hold during flights for one specific reason - they are not designed to accommodate humans while in the air. The air is not heated or circulated to the same degree. There are no emergency exits. In the event of an emergency landing, you'd have to get everyone up the stairs and onto the main deck to the exits. Retrofitting this setup sounds like it would need a lot of modifications to the aircraft to accommodate safety, and the costs of this will probably drive up the cost of seats in sections where you don't even get this benefit. I've long thought that replacing the pathetically cramped Economy-class seats with stacked pods like those used in Japanese honeycomb hotels would be a very viable solution - claustrophobic, sure, but planes already are... Similar passenger density, some semblance of privacy due to being all-enclosed, quite safe in turbulence or an emergency landing if you're laying down, and relatively uncomplicated egress. True, for persons with limited mobility it could be infeasible, but it's an option...