If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel - sitting 23" apart
Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel
Slouching toward JFK By Rebecca Boyle Posted 09.10.2010 at 5:00 pm On your last flight, did you stare with envy at the people sitting in the exit row? Did you get a charley horse from trying to cross your legs under your tray table? Consider yourself lucky, pal. Your next budget flight might ask you to fly horseback style, squeezed onto a saddle in just 23 inches of space. This new airplane seat will be officially unveiled at a trade show next week, and the early buzz is that several airlines are interested, including some in the U.S. The thought makes us cringe — which, come to think of it, we will be required to do in order to fit into these seats. The “SkyRider” is the latest innovation designed to save airlines money and, apparently, make passengers miserable. It is supposed to mimic the experience of riding horseback: “Cowboys ride eight hours on their horses during the day and still feel comfortable in the saddle,” says Dominique Menoud, director general of Aviointeriors Group, which will make the seats. Some cowboys might say otherwise, but there’s a larger point: In the future, do we really want to return to traveling Old West style? Odds are pretty good that budget airlines will be the first to order the SkyRider, which Menoud says can be used in its own cabin class. Ireland’s Ryanair already wants to sell standing-room-only seats, and this could be an aviation-authority-approved alternative. Tickets will probably be cheaper, but airlines will reap rewards by packing more people on board. That is, until people give up and choose telepresence over sardine-style travel. We’re all for future aircraft technologies that improve flight efficiency and design. By all means, give us airplanes with self- cleaning, shape-changing seats made of plant fibers. Please, just don’t make us sit 23 inches apart. http://www.popsci.com/node/48244/?cmpid=enews091610 [USA Today] |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel - sitting 23" apart
In article
, Ablang wrote: We¹re all for future aircraft technologies that improve flight efficiency and design. By all means, give us airplanes with self- cleaning, shape-changing seats made of plant fibers. Please, just don¹t make us sit 23 inches apart. http://www.popsci.com/node/48244/?cmpid=enews091610 The current uncomfortably crowded conditions on passenger airplanes, not to mention these future proposed atrocities, are in a very real sense consequences of "improved flight efficiency and design". Modern jet engines are sufficiently powerful and modern aerodynamics sufficiently advanced that passenger airliners of given fuselage size, operating range, and flight crew size can easily and efficiently transport within this fuselage substantially more loaded weight than the total weight of the passengers that can be comfortably packed into this fuselage. (It wouldn't be surprising if they could carry a full load of passengers stacked like logs until they totally fill the fuselage.) Increased passenger density translates directly into maximized efficiency and revenue (and probably reduced environmental impact). There's no easy way around this dilemma, except maybe carrying heavy freight loads in the same aircraft. I don't have any idea how much of this actually occurs -- but trying to mix speedy and efficient passenger _and_ freight handling (particularly loading and unloading) in a single transportation system seems like a difficult proposition. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel - sitting 23" apart | Ablang | Air travel | 1 | September 20th, 2010 10:22 PM |
DC rally by conservatives: "tens of thousands?" "three hundredthousand?" "five hundred thousand?" "A million people came?" The only thingagreed upon was that it was a "vast crowd" and it spells big tr | O'Donovan, PJ, Himself | Europe | 16 | August 31st, 2010 04:16 AM |
"liberalism" to "socialism" to "communism": The "end" justifies the "means" in America | PJ O'Donovan[_1_] | Europe | 5 | February 24th, 2007 04:57 PM |
NCL OnBoard "Future" Cruise Bookings | [email protected] | Cruises | 5 | March 25th, 2006 09:36 PM |