4 ms·
they look more like old school first class seats. the problem with sleeping on a plane has to do with circulation -- it's actually hard on the heart to pump bl
by mattrp 7y ago
they look more like old school first class seats. the problem with sleeping on a plane has to do with circulation -- it's actually hard on the heart to pump blood from your feet with you're motionless for hours at a time on a plane. If they really wanted to solve this, they'd do one of two things:
1) they would shift the time of departure from 6p - midnight to 3 am. They'd let everyone sleep in a special part of the gate area which would close to passengers not on the flight. Passengers could also go on board the plane and sleep while it is at the gate if they preferred. About 30 minutes before departure everyone would be awakened and they would board. This would avoid having to arrive 2 hours ahead of time and the delayed departure would still get the passengers to their destination at a reasonable time.
OR
2) they would get rid of the overhead section of the plane for redeye flights. They would stack horizontal chairs three high and everyone would be horizontal for the entire flight.
- chx 7y agoThe bunk bed concept often surfaces but see https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/21713/4188 https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/21713/4188
- mattrp 7y agoYeah I know... I have impractical ideas about air travel. My other idea was to take the second level of a 747 and convert it to a gym. Instead of seats you’d have treadmills and at the far end would be showers. Anyone could “book” time in the gym for a fee. Imagine being able to go for a run on a 18 hour transpacific flight? Of course all this gets mooted by the starship... once we can get la to Singapore in 20 minutes who cares what the seat looks like?
- CaptainZapp 7y agoI don't get why you're downvoted. I think it's a creative idea. But I don't think it will fly (pun intended). Real estate (as in space) on a plane is probably the most expensive in the world. While airlines reserve space for (for example) a bar in business class (and to the best of my knowledge only in the A380) a gym would use too much space. There's also the issue with turbulence to consider, which would make a gym (at least without significant adaptions to the machines) rather impractical.
- scrollaway 7y agoReal estate and weight are the two most expensive things on planes, and two things gyms use extensively.
- CaptainZapp 7y agoTrue; I didn't even consider the weight.
- ghaff 7y agoWell, originally, the upper deck of 747s was a lounge/bar. Which personally appeals to me a lot more than a gym does to be honest. :-)
- quotemstr 7y agoGiven the huge improvements in air travel safety over the past few decades, it probably makes sense to relax evacuation and seatbelt requirements a little bit in order to enable experimentation with bunks and other non-standard layouts.
- CaptainZapp 7y agoI still think there's the issue with business - and first class travelers, which pay top $ to lie flat on long haul flights and are main revenue source of most airlines. Offering a cheap (or at least significantly cheaper) option to lie flat would eat into their own revenue.
- ghaff 7y agoWell, and once you have lie-flat seating, I'm not sure how different that is from regular business class. Sure you could still maybe squeeze a few more seats in and offer cheaper food/booze. But the difference in the cost to the airline is probably going to be pretty slim.
- mb_72 7y agoI would pay a bit extra to have 30 minute's worth of 'horizontal time' in a small bunk for flights over 10 hours in duration. However I assume that because this isn't a thing already, someone else thought of it, did the calculations and worked out it wouldn't be profitable for the airline.
- Havoc 7y agoWhat are you going to do with 30 mins? Power nap? Few people can manage that
- taurath 7y agoI’ve wanted the “sleeper” flights for a while! I’ll bet a sleeping pod takes up a lot more space though.
- kortilla 7y agoMany airports near cities have noise curfews that disallow regularly scheduled departures and arrivals between 1 and 6am or something similar.