Airbus has new hellish way to pack people on planes

By Hannah Edensor

It’s happened: airline seating has reached its worst.

Airbus, one of the world’s leading aeroplane manufacturers, has come up with a radical new seat design, according to news.com.au.

Airbus has submitted new designs to the US Patent and Trademark Office for a seating design that uses a mezzanine model to squish more bodies onto planes. How kind of them.

In the split-level design, passengers would essentially be placed on top of each other, a horrifying image that makes us think of cattle trucks, and would be used in business class with the middle rows alternating between floor level and an elevated seating level.

This would enable more seats to fit into the premium cabins where passengers are normally seated six across.

The plans were drawn up by three Airbus inventors in Hamburg, Germany, with the drawings depicting how each seat would recline into a lying position, while those on the upper elevated level would have use of either stairs or a ladder to access their seats.

Airbus wrote in the patent filing that the seating arrangement is suitable for use in the passenger cabin of an aircraft and in other means of transport, such as buses or trains, according to news.com.au.

“In modern means of transport, in particular in aircraft, it is very important from an economic point of view to make optimum use of the available space in a passenger cabin,” Airbus wrote.

“Passenger cabins are therefore fitted with as many rows of passenger seats as possible, which are positioned with as little space between them as possible.”

“In order to still more efficiently use the space in a passenger cabin of an aircraft, [the patent] proposes to position an elevated deck structure on a main deck floor in the passenger cabin of a wide-body aircraft for providing a mezzanine seating area in a substantially unused upper lobe of the aircraft fuselage.

Airbus reassured terrified travellers i.e. us that the cabin design would still provide “a high level of comfort for the passengers” while maximising the space available on board the planes.

You can see some of the design drawings below:

Images: news.com.au

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Latest comments

ourgeneration says:

October 7, 2015 at 3:43 pm

One would hope that these ‘elevated’ business class seats would be at a greatly reduced price. The only time a current business class passenger would maybe consider using these is on an overnight long haul (that’s of course if they want to climb a ladder to get there). Makes you wonder whether these ‘designers’ would ever fly in these seats or those others that were proposed earlier for economy.

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John Grier says:

October 7, 2015 at 2:09 pm

fantastic design !!!
Sounds like it will lead to some cheaper business class seats, but will also reduce range of the aircraft. Don’t quite understand how flight attendants will serve these customers food or drinks & what happens if the customer spills the food or drinks ? (on person below)

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