It’s standing room only for this latest flight of fancy
Italian seat manufacturer Avioninteriors has come up with an aircraft seating design which would have passengers sitting so far upright they would almost be standing up.
So what else is new, I’m hearing the frequent, and not so frequent, flyers cry. The present seating on aircraft is so packed in and body challenging that perhaps semi-standing up might be a relief.
The SkyRider 2.0, recently unveiled at the Aircraft Interiors Expo 2018 in Hamburg, boasts squeezing in 20 per cent more passengers, making flights cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
Passenger bottoms would rest on small ledged seats, and there would be ample room for legs to dangle. But spare a thought for the big-bummed passenger trying to rest their Kardashian-sized butts on these minuscule seats. Only those with flat and withered Keith Richards buttocks would fit the bill. Perhaps, as a preventative measure to stop untidy buttock overflow, backside circumferences should be tape-measured at check-in.
My take on this peculiar design, which some have likened to rollercoaster seating, is that the concept doesn’t go far enough. Aircraft seating has become so clenched and nasty, why not dispense with it entirely and go for a sardine morgue drawer arrangement?
Lying horizontally in stacked morgue drawers on aeroplane flights would allow even more space and would probably prove more relaxing. Especially if one could lie back and watch a movie on a decent sized screen or, in a brief flight such as from Christchurch to Wellington, a short art house film.
No need to book ahead to secure a coveted window or aisle seat to avoid the perils of the dreaded middle seat, the morgue drawer arrangement would be far more egalitarian. Passengers would lie in their private capsule isolated from the annoying proximity of their fellow travellers, and if there was an emergency, the capsules could automatically slide out the emergency exits.
No stampeding or panicking in the aisles, just a civilised procession of pods making their orderly way through the plane to the emergency doors.
The pod experience would eliminate all that tedious hovering around in the aisles waiting for flight crew to give the go-ahead to disembark. The pods would be unloaded from the plane and loaded on to baggage trolleys so that you would be released from your pod at the carousel to pick up your luggage.
And during the flight, no need to struggle out of your pod when nature calls. For long haul flights, passengers could don adult nappies and be fed nourishing liquids through tubes pulled down from apertures in the roof of the pod. Carriers could cut costs by employing fewer flight attendants. Gone would be the days when the air host has to sling out the hash, banging their cumbersome trollies into vulnerable ankles while performing slow-moving feed-outs down the aisles.
Lying flat horizontally, rather than sitting with legs up by one’s ears as if about to have a gynaecological examination, the passenger would be in the ideal position to receive a medical scan. No need to go on a hospital waiting list, why not take the concept of a dental holiday further and get scanned while winging your way to your destination.
If horizontal flying isn’t your cup of coffee, tea or Oxo cube, then why not book a flight where you get to hang from the ceiling like a bat? One could dangle from a circular hanger, the type drycleaners use to store their cleansteamed garments.
Seriously though, it’s time to rethink the sardine can and get smart about tiny spaces, and there is no more of a tiny space than a plane interior.
Most of the stress of flying is about the invasion of personal space, rather than anxiety over pilot competence and inclement weather conditions.
Flying used to be a glamorous experience, now it’s a ghastly, up-closeand-way-too-personal confrontation of one’s own sordid humanity. No wonder the occasional passenger completely loses it and goes orbital in the cabin.
Lying peacefully in a private pod, the traveller could catch 40 winks, oblivious to the screech of crying babies, the kick in the kidneys by the knees of passengers sitting behind, or the garrulous tongues of chatty travellers.
One would emerge from the flight feeling like a giant refreshed rather than a debased earthling freaked out and frazzled by cattle-class confinement.
If we must be packed in to save fuel and footprint, then carriers would do well to never lose sight of the old hippy mantra, ‘‘I need my space, man’’.