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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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.
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