When on a commercial plane why do all the passengers sit up right. I understand they are trying to fit the most amount of people in the smallest amount of space. Couldn’t all the seats become more like beds, oriented horizontal with everyone laying down, and they could be stacked vertically. If this isn’t an option they could at least have all the seats pre set at a heavy recline angle, I just see on most flights over 2 hours everyone is trying to rest up. Surprised that one of the airlines hasn’t started to cater to an aspect like this.
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Damn I never thought of that. That would make sense but I doubt they would pay the money to do that. Cause only the rich could afford it
Even if you stack them, there’s no way you’re fitting in anything like the same number of passengers as seated.
Also, it would be unpleasant for the traveller. It’d be a small space and you’d have to be strapped into the bed for take off and landing. Also less convenient for the cabin crew. Much harder to distribute food and drinks. Also more inconvenient for the traveller. How do you eat a meal lying down?
If everyone is laying down, you can’t sell them drinks. Huge loss of profit for the airline.
The idea of heavily reclined wouldn’t be bad but likely would take up the same space. No airline is going to spend hundreds of millions to redisign seating for a slight increase in comfort.
And not sure most people would like the literal bed option when flying 1.5 hours for a business meeting. Even long distance, that’s a long time to be laying horizontally.
Do you wanna fly in a coffin tube? Cause that’s what you’re gonna get.
At what point do you think that the airplane is designed to cater for the passengers?
They are designed literally to get from place to place while carrying a human cargo, and make as much money as possible doing so, while abiding by legal rules.
If there was a rule that said they don’t need oxygen masks or the safety briefing any more, how long do you think it would be before every airline on the planet abandoned it?
Literally, cattle in transit have better conditions in terms of access to food, water, space to move around in, etc. Because the rules for cattle are more generous than the rules for humans, and the transporters of both only ever want to adhere to the legal requirements.
If you want “better”, that’s why they made first-class, etc. But notice that even business class is often only separated from economy class by a thin curtain and slightly more generous legroom (on the same adjustable chairs, for the most part!).
They have absolutely no concern for you. They just want you to sit down, shut up, buy shit, and then move on/off the aircraft as quickly as possible. Almost every “comfort” you’re given is the bare legal minimum, or designed to make money off you, or designed purely as a minimalistic measure to stop you kicking off (e.g. a USB charger, or onboard Wifi or whatever).
Do you know why? You still buy airline tickets despite all the above. If people genuinely want that kind of plane, the only way to get it is to not use a plane until someone makes one like that (I’ll say “again” because some early flights were quite luxurious, but extraordinarily expensive at the time).
It’s one of the reasons I stopped using EasyJet or RyanAir. They went too far. I don’t mind a bit of basic facility if I’m only on a plane for 2 hours and the flight cost £50 or so. That’s fine. But then they went too far and I’m now in the “I’d rather pay £100 and get some legroom, a snack, a quiet flight with no adverts, and no boarding nonsense and luggage-size police, thanks”.
Fact is, their business model is only sustainable while people give them money for doing exactly what they’re doing. If people stopped giving them money but only ever gave their competitors 200% of the price for some basic comforts, then those flights would be out of business and the norm would establish itself to be what people are paying for.
Tolerate and even REWARD bad customer service, service delivery and products, and that becomes the norm.
Same as pre-ordering games that turn out to be shite, but then not demanding a refund, and all kinds of other situations.
The sad truth is, those airlines can normalise those things because PEOPLE ACCEPT THEM. There’s a compromise that those people are prepared to accept, and that kind of dehumanisation is acceptable to them. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t get on the plane or buy the ticket in the first place.
Double-decker planes, better legroom, large spaces to move around in, etc. all exist on some modern aircraft. But you’d baulk at the price, compare it against these alternatives, and choose to suffer the indignities to save some money. I know, because almost everybody who has ever flown would / does / has.
I will only book awkward-hour flights that nobody wants. It’s a compromise that works for me, because they’re quieter, the airports are less busy, etc. I will only book flights under a certain cost. I will only books flights with an airline that doesn’t do most of the above nonsense. If a flight does these things to me, I think again about ever using them in the future. And at times I’ve said “Fuck it”, and done things differently even if it involves more time and expense.
In a consumer-driven world, you have to stop consuming things that aren’t to your taste. Sure, that might mean that you “can’t find a flight you like”. And that’s your answer. That product doesn’t exist, because everyone compromises. Until lots and lots and lots of people “can’t find a flight they like” AND they refuse to compromise, that situation is just rewarding those airlines for providing flights that people don’t like, and they’re actually taking that to their boardrooms to justify why it would be less profitable to provide those kinds of flights to people anyway.
The first law of consumerism is: Stop buying shit that you don’t like. Even if you believe it’s “the only way”.
You do not have to be sitting right up. You can also be standing, strapped to a kinda-sorta “seat”. The system has already been tested by a few low-budget airlines.
I have traveled in a long-distance bus where they put all the seats in horizontal position and we were lying down for the night. It is forbidden now here in EU. If there is a collision there is nothing to stop you from sliding all the way through the bus.
There are sleeper train cars, but there is enough space there to accommodate that on the train. And you pay extra as this – way fewer passengers can fit in the same space.
1- People like to talk to each other.
2- How do you do seatbelts/safety?
3- What about children and old people?
4- How do you drink and eat?
5- People like looking out the window.
6- What about the majority who want to sit?
7- People like to access their carry-on without going to the front/back of the plane.
Even if we make the assumption that passengers would like this (they wouldn’t, but that’s irrelevant here…) the very practical fact is that this would be a disaster any way you structured it. How do passengers get in and out of their “seats” if there’s no space to move upright between rows? How do people evacuate in an emergency if they have to climb over a set of bunk beds to reach an aisle? How to people access and move luggage if they can’t see or reach the floor? What does the person in the window seat do when they need to use the bathroom, but can’t sit up and can’t move sideways, and the people next to them are heavy sleepers?
The only way this layout works is if every single seat is an aisle seat, and you massively increase the gap between rows. It is wildly inefficient, meaning prices go through the roof to an utterly unsustainable level, and it would be detrimental for the majority of customers, who do things like read work on laptops, watch movies, etc and have demonstrated that lowest price wins business. Humans aren’t cordwood, and any layout of seating has to account for actually getting to and using the seat – not just some concept of stacking efficiency.
Singapore airlines does (did?) actually offer something like this on certain flights, with seats that convert to beds. Last I heard, the price was around $15,000 one way. Not for your average traveller.
Personally I would think:
1. For a line of 3 seats, it is unlikely to stretch 6ft for a passenger to lay straight, not to mention the tall guys.
2. Would the passenger think it is a perk if he can only lie down, but without the headroom to sit.
3. Anyone falling from even the second tier, on a plane, can be fatal. Even assuming everyone obey the safety regulations to buckle up well, there is extra chance of accident climbing up and down.
As part of the certification process, aircraft manufacturers are required to demonstrate that an aircraft, in maximum density configuration, can be completely evacuated within 90 seconds using only half of the total number of emergency exits.
Stacking passengers in bunk beds will very likely slow the emergency exit and the aircraft will not be certified
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