Having just done a close to 20 hour flight (sort of - 6 hours CPT to ADD, just enough time to go to another plane, 14 hours ADD to IAD via a technical stop in Dublin), I've got to say just how absolutely miserable it is to fly for a long period of time on a full flight. Particularly if you're taller than 6'2" (~1.9m) and you have broader shoulders, you're going to be massively uncomfortable.
Yeah, I want a cheap flight, but if there was a small perk where I could physically lie flat for ~15 minutes at some point during the flight, I would pay for that. I haven't been able to really deload my spine for pushing 48 hours (aside from some psuedo-yoga stretching while standing) due to further connections and layovers and it sucks.
International flight is an amazing, painful miracle of science and technology. Maybe SpaceX's BFR will make it better :-) But I highly doubt we'll ever see a reasonably priced long-haul flight with a gym available to us peasants.
> I've got to say just how absolutely miserable it is to fly for a long period of time on a full flight.
(I have similar height and shoulder issues.) It may not seem like it at the back (economy class) but different aircraft are different, and sometimes airlines also lay them out differently from each other. For example look at the Boeing 777 initially released in 1995. At the time economy was laid out 3-3-3. Nowadays most airlines use 3-4-3. That is the difference between a 19 inch wide seat on Singapore Airlines, and a 17 inch wide seat on Emirates.
The aircraft to watch out for the most is the Boeing 787. With one minor exception, they all have one more seat in each economy class row than Boeing originally intended. In general the comment from those of above average height having been on one, is that they will never set foot in a 787 again! The Airbus A350 should be mostly alright on most carriers, but you will need to double check.
A weak rule of thumb is to favour Airbus over Boeing, as their cabin widths and historical choices have tended to result in wider seats in Airbus aircraft. In the US there are efforts to get regulation of seat sizing (under the guise of "safety"), and airlines are trying various things. But someone in the US who is ~1.9m is in the 95th height percentile. It is hard for airlines to cater for that last 5% without a negative economic impact.
There's no need for scare quotes here. There is a legitimate safety concern: airlines have packed their aircraft with so many seats that it's not possible, in an emergency, to evacuate safely and quickly. The usual certification procedure for a new type of aircraft calls for simulating an evacuation with half of the doors inoperable, and requires everyone out (literally out, not merely "queued up at a door waiting to get out") within 90 seconds from the order to evacuate.
And the argument is that while this is achievable in test conditions, the test conditions tend to involve cabin configurations less dense than what the airlines fly, which means the 90-second evacuation target cannot be met with the planes as they're actually flown. Enforcing changes to return to compliance with the 90-second evacuation does not require enacting any new seat-width or legroom regulations, which is why it's an attractive option for people who want to get something done ("enforce this existing thing" is easier than "draft and enact a new thing").
There are also concerns about survivability of high-density cabins, based on lack of room between rows; flight attendant seats are the place to look here, because they're designed to have a certain minimum amount of space available for a flight attendant's head to swing in the event of a sudden jerk of the body (as in a collision). The high-density passenger seating doesn't have this, and would almost certainly produce head and neck injuries in a real emergency due to everyone's heads smashing into seat backs.
The evacuation test configuration is be the densest possible configuration - the aircraft will be certified to carry that many passengers based off this test.
For instance, the A380 evacuation test had 873 people get out in 90 seconds (https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a3...), and I don’t think anyone flies a 800+ seat A380 today. I believe the densest A380 is the Emirates Regional configuration with 600 seats.
Planes basically never crash, though. So legislating less dense cabins under the guise of safety, while tempting for those of us who would like slightly more expensive and less crowded flights, is at best intellectually dishonest and at worst a direct path to more overall transport deaths thanks to increased car use.
It's actually not the airlines who are being hypocritical here.
Let's not forget about the many deaths that typically occur in the traffic jams between Sydney and London.
Hey, since planes basically never crash, maybe they shouldn't have any safety equipment at all? I bet you could reduce weight a lot by just marking sitting positions on the bare floor in economy. And you could provide hand-hold straps every so often for turbulent bits (we're acknowledging those, right?).
Strangely, there are relatively few opportunities to shift transport modes for intercontinental travel, other than trivial cases like crossing from Europe to Asia across the Bosporus, which some people do as part of their daily commute. Claiming that you're going to reduce deaths by moving people in aircraft versus cars? Even if aircraft were 100% safe, you couldn't move enough people through the current commercial aviation system to make a noticeable dent.
(Fermi estimate: 800 million passenger tickets in the US (2015), 350 million people make an average of 2 ground vehicle trips per day, that's 700 million * 365 = 255 billion. If airplanes can carry 25% more people (and they can't) by perfect substitution for automobile trips, that would reduce it from 255 to 254 billion trips. 1/255 fewer deaths. That's best case, because the US already makes more plane trips per capita than any other country.)
The relevant number for this discussion is not how often planes crash, but rather how often they need an evacuation. That is much more frequent than crashes [1].
But... the 787 has higher air pressure so you don’t feel dry AF at the end of the flight. The carbon fiber body allows for higher cabin pressure - a life saver IMHO.
IMO - only flown the A380 a few times, but never felt turbulent (may just be my luck). A350 is quiet AF compared to the 787 (flew them back to back on a flight through Qatar)
One thing I do love about the 787 though is the big windows - tall people get a (edit: lol not 360) very good view around the aircraft if it's not too full.
It's not a secret. You can look up details like these on SeatGuru and other sites.
This should be better than a legislated solution. If it was regulated, airlines would focus on gaming the measurement process to provide the biggest number possible, even if at the cost of actual passenger comfort.
It is troubling that the comment here which suggested oversized passengers could pay more is already flagged, when that profit motive is exactly what would result in larger, higher-priced seats.
It's stupidly uncomfortable for tall and broad people to fly, and while one user here in this thread commented about that: 'I would pay for a larger seat,' I'm making a guess they then downvoted the comment, 'make bigger passengers pay more.'
I understand that this is very problematic on several fronts, but it would follow quite naturally from the way that children seats cost less and (on lap) toddlers travel almost for free.
I'm big and weigh more than average - and seat width has never been a problem.
My problem is the length of my thighs. I can't really put them straight, they act as natural recline blockers. That's the nasty part - it's not about being comfortable, I have paid for extra leg room. I just demand that the damn planes be large enough to sit without pain. I don't demand comfort.
If you don't fit in the seat you'll most likely have to pay for an additional ticket anyway. Of course there are cases where the "big guy" just slightly overflows over the neighbors and in that case they're SOL.
But tickets should be sold per sit per weight. And that should include the passenger and all the luggage. So a 50Kg person travelling with 5Kg of luggage shouldn't pay the same as a 150Kg person travelling with 40Kg of luggage. One should pay for 1 seat/55Kg, the other for 1-2 seats/190Kg.
Airlines only care about the number of sits and total weight so the pricing should be done accordingly. And before anyone screams discrimination, I physically can't fit in most airplane seats (or can, but in a contortionist style not fit for more than a few minutes of usage). I have to pay for upgrades or extra leg room at every flight. I'm sure nobody thinks discrimination in my case.
It's the same with leaning back the sit where it takes space from a seat you paid and it turns a usable seat into an unusable one. Which is why many times I prefer to fly low cost and pay for extra leg room then to go for "premium" airlines and have to be squashed in my seat because I risk being greeted by airport security after landing if I make a fuss.
If you're tall and skinny you really draw the short straw of air travel. You still get to pay full price but without actually fitting in most places in the plane. Nobody feels any moral obligation to care and no chances of losing height in the gym.
Your pay by weight pricing sounds fair, but in practise it would be pointless if fair. The vast majority of weight of a plane is not the passengers, and certainly not the variance of weight amongst the passengers.
A 777-300ER is 170,000kg empty. Divide that equally by 350 passengers and you get 485kg per passenger. We'll compare a 75 vs 100kg passenger which brings the totals to 560 and 585kg. ie a 33% passenger weight increase only makes a 4% total weight change. Note that these are best case numbers and using real world ones is a heavier weight to allocate, and even more trivial weight change per passenger.
You know what's even lighter than passengers? Their luggage. And yet you get to pay steep premiums for going over the usual 23-32Kg limit. If you're curious what overcharge we're talking about see here [0].
This puts in context what kind of deal a 150Kg person gets compared to a 50Kg person. They pay the same price, one gets to carry 100Kg of extra weight. And again, this is a treatment that is only extended to overweight people. A very tall person or an invalid get squat in terms of "good deals". It's only discrimination when we're talking about extra kilograms.
Weight on an airplane is always a major consideration. But even if it weren't, fairness doesn't always have to come attached to profit.
> steep premiums for going over the usual 23-32Kg limit
That means oversize or special handling due to size or weight.
Also most air freight goes in the belly of passenger planes - more than goes in dedicated freighter aircraft. Your luggage is competing with that space. In addition it costs more money to handle luggage vs not handling it all.
That simply means slightly heavier luggage that gets over-charged by the Kg once you go over a weight that's still a fraction of the passenger. So a 10% increase in the weight of a 23Kg bag gets charged $50. A 200% increase in the weight of a passenger is on the house.
Almost everything carried by planes - freight or fuel - gets charged by size and weight. The only thing that gets charged exclusively per seat is the passenger. For every passenger that weight 50Kg a plane can carry 100Kg of additional cargo compared to a 150Kg passenger. An increase in average passenger weight of 20Kg for a plane carrying 500 passengers means 10.000Kg less anything else it can carry or more fuel burnt. Both of these cost a lot of money.
Yet airlines are willing to carry the extra 100Kg for free probably because of the outcry coming from the millions of overweight people around the world screaming "discrimination!". Still they are not willing to give 1" of extra leg room for free or larger toilets although there's nothing one can do about it if they fall into these categories.
I think my point stands. The actual algorithm used to calculate is not important for the discussion as much as the concept: it's a fair way to charge for such a service that has hard limits for size and weight.
I'm not forgetting about fuel, and gave the most optimistic numbers I could. Weight for premium passengers (eg bigger more complex seats, more floor space, bigger toilets, more galley space, equipment and food/drink) should be allocated to them, not shared evenly. I also don't think it is fair to allocate items like duty free carts, or what belly cargo is using. At the end of the day if you do a more realistic and fair allocation (~half the plane is not used by economy passengers), especially what people have control over (I didn't ask for duty free, dead heading crew, alcohol etc) then the weight differences between economy passengers still are not significant compared to the big picture.
Your example is not entirely appropriate because first you're comparing 2 classes of paying customers: the ones that paid a lot, and the ones that paid a little. Then you compare a service that's provided for all passengers equally, like the duty free.
My point was being overweight is free, being "overheight" or an invalid will cost you every time. I have to pay a lot more to get the same level of (dis)comfort that everyone else gets for free.
It's the kind of discrimination that people just let slide but it's discrimination nonetheless.
i think we are talking past each other - my point is that passenger wight vs total weight is not a very relevant metric - you need to think about in the context of payload [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Takeoff_weight_diagr...] which can be as little as ~10% of MTOW
It’s not better, SG is helpful but sloppy and airlines have no problem swapping to a different plane without telling you until it’s too late to change plans.
Besides India, I have had some of my worst trips inside the EU; particularly with Vueling (although Ryanair is a close second). In a lot of Vueling seats I do not physically fit and the staff just does not actually care. If I avoid Vueling and Ryanair, it is generally comfortable, but compared to a lot of Asia (outside India and probably more but I would not know) it’s pretty poor.
The higher cabin pressure of the 787 is amazing, though. I suppose if you're extra-tall it makes sense to avoid (or at least to check the seat configuration), but otherwise they're lovely aircraft.
The higher cabin pressure is happening on all recent (large) aircraft designs. It is a result of using more composite materials and humidity control. None of that matters when the seat is smaller than you are though!
As a 6'5 frequent flyer...I feel your pain. I generally do check seat widths before flying. That said, I much prefer Boeings over Airbus(but hey, anything beats Embraer). Maybe it's nostalgia, the 747 was amazing and had tons of room to get up and walk around. That said, even in the newer fleets I like Boeing, mainly because I physically don't fit in Airbus's excuse for a restroom.
Embraer do regional (ie smaller ~75 seat range) aircraft. The 747 etc was amazing, but 20+ years ago airlines considered 60% load factor to be normal. (Load factor is what proportion of the seats are occupied.) Nowadays 85% is what they target. Before virtually everyone could get aisle and window seats - now not so much!
The restrooms are not a plane manufacturer thing. The changes happening are Airbus figuring out how to make them smaller. They have to be big enough for a disabled person, but Airbus figured out that you could have two smaller ones next to each that open together to meet the requirements. Galleys and restrooms don't make revenue, so everyone is figuring out how to make them smaller and free up room for more seats. You found one.
I was really excited for 787s at Air Canada, and soon discovered over multiple trips that the seat back is too thin and light.
If the person behind me puts the provided a water bottle in the seat pocket in front of them, as they do almost every flight, it pokes, pushes, and rubs my back enough that I wake up.
$400 is an annual wage for much of the world. if you can fly in a plane you are rich, it's just a question of how rich you are.
In the 1970s a transatlantic return was about $3000 in today's money. You can get a business class bed for that now. If you could afford to travel in economy in 1970, you can do it in business today, and business today is far above first class in those days.
If you work for a company that insists on flying you in economy and you don't like it, it's time to move job.
Not-economy is often twice as expensive though. If it's for leisure then sure, you could opt to go somewhere else or keep saving for a more expensive flight, but if it's for business your employer probably doesn't want to spend twice as much.
If you're talking about physical injury, then I don't think it would be legal for any 5% of your customers. Pretty sure injuring people is illegal regardless of protected class status.
Better seats are usually WAY more expensive than the slight earnings statistic for height. At 6’5”, I’ll do the Early Bird check-in (out of my own pocket) on SWA, or the economy plus on United regional jets. I cannot physically get my knees in a standard regional jet seat.
The only relief for tight airline seats is a few drinks to dull the misery.
That sucks man. I'm 6'2", my knees almost hit. When I first sat in the new thin seats, I extended my leg straight down the aisle. My foot reached well in front of the seat pan ahead of me. It was crushing to see that visual evidence of just how tight it was.
The worst part for me is my shins are long enough my knees & thighs are elevated off the seat, causing the blood to pool. I have wondered if economy plus allows enough leg extension to alleviate that problem.
The economy plus leaves room between my knees and seat. On one of the regional jets, where the seating columns shift slightly, there is a single economy plus seat with a huge amount of leg room, and you can stretch them out.
There's an unexplained but significant correlation between height and IQ [1] which in turn successfully predicts a correlation with higher incomes. Doesn't mean it's causal, but the existence of such correlation is not in question.
Air New Zealand already offers the Skycouch, in which an additional portion of the seat folds up to make them wider and you can lay across all three seats: https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy-skycouch
I've flown on it once. It's not as nice as a real bed, you can't fully stretch out without sticking your legs into the aisle, but it's a heck of a lot nicer than trying to recline in a normal economy seat.
I don't know exactly how much it cost, since someone else had bought the tickets for me, and may have used frequent flyer benefits to offset the costs. I think you basically pay the cost of each extra seat, so it's not cheap, but cheaper than upgrading all the way to business class to get seats that recline all the way to flat. If you have someone you're comfortable sharing with, then you only pay for one extra seat for the two of you.
I've just purchased this. For a 9 hour flight from Auckland to Honolulu, it's $230 USD additional per couple. Basically you're paying $230 for the extra seat, for more seat pitch, and for a leg rest that turns into a flat surface. It's really great!
That is a brilliant idea especially for couples with children on long hauls.
Not many people will pay for business on their own dime (business class generally not worth the multiplier -- it's a captive market for consultants and the wealthy), but some might consider buying an extra seat an extra seat if the price is right.
I can't sleep on airplanes, primarily because I can't sleep while sitting up. Even totally exhausted, I'll fall asleep for 20 minutes at most, before something becomes painful and wakes me up.
It's completely miserable on a transpacific because I arrive so very exhausted.
Still, business is WILDLY more expensive. There's no intermediate step to paying several times more. Is actually sleeping worth a few hundred dollars to me? Yes. A few thousand? No.
Premium Economy is a thing now and I’ve become a die hard. Is business worth $5000 more? No. But I’ll spend $400 more for a person sized seat and better food.
Premium Economy doesn't really solve the problem of not being able to lay down -- I can't sleep well when sitting, even in a Premium Economy seat that has a bit more recline.
But in a lay-flat seat, I can easily sleep for 7 - 8 hours (though still need a couple glasses of wine to kick-start it since bedtime on the plane doesn't usually coincide with my body's clock)
BA has one of the densest business class seats in the business, yet it takes up twice as much space as premium economy and 4 times as much space as business.
A quick look on the Uk-singapore route shows business as 5 times the price as economy.
But business is roughly double the price of economy. Do you need to buy an extra seat at the same price, or is it just a small premium available when they think the plane will be underbooked?
Note: China Airlines also has these seats, branded "Family Couch".
I think the target price for the Skycouch seat is somewhat below retail for just buying a third seat, so in that respect it's a pretty good deal if you're already flying longhaul economy with a partner. I mean, I'd flat out pay the retail price to guarantee an empty third seat in a row, and Skycouch has other benefits. That said, while it's an improvement, nobody's going to have a relaxing time trying to have two people sleep lying down on that couch unless they're tiny, and the two people better be very comfortable with close contact.
In theory you can always just reserve and buy an empty seat next to you, but ticketing and check-in procedures are mildly trickier to guarantee that it'll stay empty. I've considered it for flying longhaul solo before but these days I'd generally rather just pay the premium for an upgrade rather than gamble with nonstandard ticketing arrangements.
I was wondering if you could still book ship passage places easily these days (without it being a cruise, which is another possibility for select routes), and came across someone talking about booking rooms for ~$100/day (including food) on cargo ships.[1] Seems like it takes ~7-10 days to do a transatlantic leg of a route, so it would definitely take a while (and it has very limited routes, so some flying or overland travel might also be required for many routes), but it might be an interesting way to take a vacation before or after a business trip.
If you go to cruisesheets.com you can sort cruises by price per day. I've seen transatlantic cruises at $30 a day (including food). That's actually somewhat tempting if I had work I could do without needing the internet more than once a day.
For developers in certain areas (SF for example), $100/day might be cheaper than (or on par with) local housing. With a good internet solution, that might be an interesting way to work and travel at the same time.
I remember hearing once about a company trying to turn an old cruise ship into a floating hotel off the coast of California. The idea was also to keep it in international waters so that visas and taxes were not a thing. I wonder what happened to that idea?
Thanks! The one I was thinking of was for non-us it workers to work close to the us. They even were going to fly out US residents for meeting on the boat.
I think I'd prefer 20 hours of discomfort over 10 days of being in transit. Depends on the transit of course, if it's a cruise + vacation then I wouldn't mind so much.
Well, the way they market it on the site looked to be sort of like "chill, low-key cruise". I imagine if your idea of a vacation is to get to the beach and read a book most the time, it might be somewhat comparable.
Been there, done that (6'2, Australia <-> Europe, multiple times). I couldn't agree more. The fact that there is no way to fully stretch my legs while seated is driving me nuts on such long flights.
I get that they have to cramp in as many seats into a plane as they can in order to get the prices down to a point where normal people are willing to pay for a ticket. But it's really such a pain in the butt.
Would I pay double the price for a ticket to get a bed? Probably not: long distance flights are already expensive. And knowing how everything on planes is smaller than in real-life, I'm sure whatever they'd sell me as "a bed" would not really be accommodating either.
As a consequence, I now just avoid these long distance trips. A pity for one who loves to travel but on the upside, it's better for the environment anyway.
If you have a long trip with a connection, most airlines will charge you the same whether you get the earliest connection or get one a few days later. If you aren’t in a rush this is a good way to break it up, and travel to somewhere different.
Yes it costs more booking a hotel for a couple of nights, but it’s still probably going to be cheaper than upgrading to business class. You usually have to book it directly through their website (look for “multi city”) rather than through an agent.
When flying Auckland-Zurich we decided to delay the stop over in Dubai by 24h and used the time to sleep in a hotel. We went to bed at 10am and got up the next day at 7am. We had pizza delivered for a short midnight lunch in bed. It was perfect.
If you have the time, just add stops. With Skyscanner/Google flights, I am usually able to cut a lot off the price while seeing some nice places on my way to and from Aus to EU. It takes some puzzling, but flying from Aus is usually weirdly expensive and adding stops cuts the price (last time it more than halved it to stop on Bali for 2 days; what a punishment!). Philipines or Vietnam usually cut prices a lot too. Bangkok is another one but less these days. And it cuts up the journey; helps with physical issues when you are tall (and/or broad/large) as well as with the jetlag.
Strange. There was a known way from London from/to Sydney via Philipines that was much cheaper a year ago. And I had luck with Denpasar and Colombo many times including this year.
> Been there, done that (6'2, Australia <-> Europe, multiple times). I couldn't agree more. The fact that there is no way to fully stretch my legs while seated is driving me nuts on such long flights.
Same boats for me exactly. My solution is just to get up and hang out in the aisle, or near the emergency exits whenever I feel like it. Sometimes I read standing up, I stretch, I even sit on the floor with my legs straight. I'm polite to the staff and other passengers, and I have never once had anyone tell me to stop what I'm doing.
It's great in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. An hour of stretching makes a BIG difference on those 14 hour back-to-back flights.
And knowing how everything on planes is smaller than in real-life, I'm sure whatever they'd sell me as "a bed" would not really be accommodating either.
I'm over 6' tall. I've flown multiple different lie-flat products on long-haul flights (and will try out another one next month), and I've never been on one that was too small. I suspect because that type of premium-cabin seating is built with assumptions about the demographics of the customers (in other words, they assume the typical passenger in these seats will be male, and aim to support a range of typical male sizes).
And surely a bed would be way more than double the price of an economy ticket, considering that business class is already often 5 times more expensive for long international flights.
Would depend a lot on the bed. If it was a narrow, double- or triple-stacked bunk, then it might not take up much more floor space than the equivalent number of economy seats.
What you're paying for in business class is the privilege of having a flat bed or a big comfy chair, on demand.
> But I highly doubt we'll ever see a reasonably priced long-haul flight with a gym available to us peasants.
It's all relative. Suppose the cheapest flights were twice what they currently are. Let's say $350 transatlantic one way, or $2300 return on your flight from South Africa to the eastern US. Flights would still be affordable to the middle class, which despite your "peasants" wording actually makes up ~100% of cost-conscious flyers. We'd fly less often and complain - as we do now - that flying would be so much better if we had twice the space per person for the same price and spent some of that on gyms, creches and hot bunks.
But actually we live in that counterfactual! And it turns out we don't really want those amenities. Our collective expressed preference - and given the lack of variety across airlines, it must be almost unanimous - is to be squeezed tighter and get to fly intercontinental a bit more often.
That's the irony of it all. It seems like so many people complain about the comfort of airlines when in aggregate they put airlines that offered better amenities out of business due to slightly higher prices.
Before the internet became the standard for booking travel, travel agents were often used to book flights. They could persuade people to spend just a bit more (around $10-$20) to fly on airlines with better food and more space. It worked!
As soon as sorting by price became the standard it became a race to the bottom. Airlines are only responding to market demand. The fact is everyone want's a premium experience but when it comes time to pay they only want the absolute cheapest fare. The travel aspect of a trip is now considered a tolerated annoyance instead of part of the overall experience. The same thing is happening with hotels as they eliminate services to offer cheaper rooms with nothing else.
Do you value quality of quantity you need to ask yourself. Is it better to have fewer long trips or frequent short trips you need to ask yourself.
It's not that I want a terrible experience, it's that I can easily sort by price and I can't easily determine how comfortable a plane will be. Until a site allows me to sort by a weighted function of price and comfort it's just too much effort to book a flight by anything but price. Taking into account the various combinations of airports, dates, times, locations (I typically fly for leisure), optimizing is already a exponentially more difficult with each option even with a simple cost function, never mind one that I have to go to a separate website to look up for each and every possible flight.
What a useless reply. Your parent is IMO accurate. The consumer is not actually valuing price above everything else; the consumer does not have all the information on how comfortable this or that flight is, and we all know markets only work optimally when the buyer has all the information.
Basically the market for airline flights is not a well functioning transparent market, so you cannot say "aha, the consumer preference is obviously the cheapest ticket at all costs".
Personally I would happily pay a little more for more legroom, but have found no good reliable way to find those tickets.
I might be in the minority, but I usually take a look at Seat Guru or read one or two trip reports or flight reviews before buying an transatlantic or transcontinental airline ticket, just as I would with any other $500+ purchase.
That tech sounds scary - cause people to fall asleep with the press of a button - image walking up to a bank, pushing the button on your device to make everyone inside fall asleep, then walking away with the bank's cash...among other things.
OR - a "freedom fighter" making a political statement while onboard an airplane.
I am close to 2m and also broad (my shoulders stick out quite a bit) and I could not do that. Usually in this case the person in front and/or beside me will start complaining to the staff and they will relocate me. I have been put in premium and swapped with people in exit seats because I physically do not sit and every movement bothers people around me.
No :) I am almost 2m tall and not scrawny. In a lot of seats that is kind of torture. It was fine when I was 25, but at close to 45 it is just painful longhaul, but at least there I can sit. I cannot physically sit in some chairs in short EU flights without bothering everyone around me. Which is why they usually just put me somewhere else.
Indeed if I was 2 by 2 I would say I should book 2 chairs, but inside EU, especially northern EU, a lot of people are tall and in NL (where I am from) often taller than me and yet the seats are smaller than a lot of asian airline seats where I am the tallest. If you have to fly for vacation or very sporadically then it does not matter too much, but if you fly a lot and for work, in which case you want to feel rested, it is somewhat of a pain to go through the same thing every time.
Then ofcourse, you can say 'pay more'; the unfortunate thing is that EU internal flight business class is just economy with slightly more legroom and a free middle seat for a looooot of money. While, again in Asia, business class on short flights, means large chairs (2-2 arrangements with comfy chairs vs 3-3 cheap feeling plastic mini chairs in the same A320) for less money for the same distance.
The lack of a true business class within EU really stunned me. I really don't understand it.
I don't fit, at all, in Economy seats, so a proper business class seat is my only option if I'm going to fly.
I tried booking Business flights within Europe last year, but after re-checking flight details several times, looking on SeatGuru, and a ton of googling I realised there just wasn't any(1).
Instead, I ended up getting trains and ferries (and the occasional train-ferry, thanks Germany/Denmark) to go Amsterdam->Oslo->Barcelona->Amsterdam.
It took a lot longer, but at least I was comfortable, and I got to visit a bunch of extra places in between.
e: (1) okay, there are some 'secret' ones where a long-haul international aircraft is re-positioned, but these are hard to find, subject to an aircraft swap or outright cancellation at any time, and on limited routes and dates.
Yes business is in most cases a blocked middle seat. BA used to have more leg room but that was "enhanced" away
The problem is business demand varies wildly - some flights will warrant 50 seats, some struggle with 5, sp the cabins are varied -- by eliminating extra leg room BA squeezed in 12 more seats, which is £500 on a full plane. They figures that was better than losing 1 seat in business which itself is £500, because most people travelling in business are paying for the schedule and thus don't have competition.
the train often works well on the continent - especially with sleeper trains. Eurostar is less appealing thanks to the security theatre, and Paris is a pain to change in.
Yeah I know a few long haul ones, like Heathrow to Amsterdam with a flight that goes to Indonesia is a widebody with proper business. Because of the short stop and most people in Heathrow are boarding for Indonesia. But those are not common.
This would be a cool place to try short-term "seat-swapping" rentals, a real "AirBnB" (ba-da-ching) as it were:
You buy a super-expensive bed-cube on a 20-hour flight, then register your flight and seat and mark a schedule when it's available for seat-swapping. "Guests" can book in 15-minute increments (on-demand if the flight has Internet). During their time, you swap seats and get to know their seat-neighbors.
Assuming an hour on each end for take-off/landing, and 8 hours you'd reserve for sleeping, that leaves 10 hours at $20/15-min = $800 recouped.
Except the Business Class seats flying international cost $10k+ in many cases (from what I hear online, I can barely afford to fly cattle class once every 5 years). I don't think someone that spends that much is willing to give up their seat for a majority of the flight for $800?
He said in 15 minutes increment how is that the majority of a 18h flight? I believe the purpose is to stretch and for the other person to save a bit of money. So you may book it a few times during the 18h flight maybe every 4 hours for 30 minutes and pay for that.
I'm roughly the size you described and my 14-ish hour flight to China was the closest thing to torture I've ever experienced. The last few hours were pure physical and mental agony. Too tired to do anything productive, too uncomfortable to sleep, and sick of every form of in-flight entertainment.
Maybe frequent flyers get used to it or know how to prepare better for long fights, but I'll be making sure I have a layover from now on.
Frequent flyers fly business class. It would be insane to fly a full work flight schedule in long-haul economy.
The occasional SFO-NYC in economy where my upgrade doesn't clear is torture. I can't fathom doing my usual 10h weekly flight in economy seats. I fly 150k miles a year, on about 80 flights or so. Pretty much all in business or first. Paid by myself. It's really not as expensive as people think… I spend maybe $15,000 annually on flights. Optimizing judiciously is key.
For what it’s worth I did find that I adapted to long flights and jet lag. The first time I did the NYC to LON redeye I was a mess the first day. After doing it every other week for awhile it was no problem. Then I did a Dallas to Sydney flight and found I had no trouble. I moved my sleep around a couple days before so that I would sleep for the middle 8 hours of the 16 hour flight. Being awake for four hours on either side of a night of sleep and getting up to walk around a lot made it a breeze.
You should then try a 20 hours long bus trip instead in order to traverse 1/10th of the distance.
I honestly do not care how comfortable and/or uncomfortable the plane is as long as it takes me wherever I want to go. I'd rather keep my wads of cash and spend them on stuff that make me happy.
I'm 5'6" and 135lbs and have flown on a lot of 13+ hour flights. Frankly, I'm surprised that it's even legal to make airline coach seats current size, because it barely fits me. After 9 hours, I'm usually ready to stab myself.
Business class has gotten pretty cheap these days. I'm in the middle of a trip from LA to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and New York… all in business class with the long-hauls on lie-flat seats. Total cost… $1700. Entirely reasonable, and for me paying a bit extra is a no-brainer.
Best I've seen is virgin atlantic. When I flew to vegas from London with them it was $45 USD per flight to get an economy seat with a bit more room. There was about 8 or 9 rows of these slightly roomier seats and it was great. Wish more airlines did this.
Because the price difference between economy and business class can exceed the cost of the rest of the trip - it's not within the realm of affordability for many people, they can either fly economy or not at all.
I've been looking up flights recently and if your rent is less than 700 you are lucky. You can buy a first class ticket, round trip to the other side of the planet
Just because you've found one ticket somewhere for $700 doesn't mean that's where I want to go or is a time that I can go. Many of my vacations revolve around family events for extended family in another country, so I have limited flexibility in dates or destination.
I'm looking at tickets right now, $735 for economy, $3500 - $6000+ for business, $15,000+ for first class. Fortunately I have a lot of miles, so a 160K mile business class awards ticket is a possibility.
It wasn't just one ticket, i was looking at quite a few destinations, that was just an example. If you plan ahead and shift the departure by a single day the price drops incredibly.
Unless the airline made a huge mistake, I could have bought a round trip ticket to Thailand for 700 first class. It would obviously be slightly higher in price after fees, 9/11 security fees and whatever else is tacked on. Let's say it's a total of 1k.
Save for it. Get good credit cards with valuable travel points. Put it off until you can pay for a premium experience which you'll enjoy more. While saving research deeply where you are going and plan for a longer trip - it makes spending money on better travel more economical.
Put it off until you can pay for a premium experience which you'll enjoy more
I've vacationed in economy, business class, and first class, and the flight is the least memorable part of the trip -- I'd rather spend more money at the destination. For sure, a lay flat seat on a long-haul flight is fantastic compared to being strapped in a coach seat for 8+ hours, but unless I can pay for it with miles, I'd rather spend the money on a nicer hotel or longer stay (or just keep that money in my pocket)
I think many people would. But yet there is incessant complaining about their flight. There just seems to be this cognitive dissonance between keeping money in the pocket and complaining about flight arrangements. Either save longer or deal with it.
Most people complaining are probably those people who have to fly a lot for work. From a psychological perspective I imagine that a flight is a lot less enjoyable if what's waiting for you on the other side is a series of sales meetings compared to if it's that 2 week vacation you've been looking forward to all year.
Why should people not complain if they feel the next higher product tier is a rip-off? You could buy two seats at twice the price to get some more space to spread yourself over, but that's obviously not ideal. Some people are asking for something better, but airlines might not be aware of consumer demand (or ignore it because they want to sell their higher tier seats, which many people can't afford, though).
I think a lot of that stems from the ever shrinking seat pitch and width. Like United's 3-4-3 seating on the 777 - it is super cramped, even in Economy Plus (which gives a few inches of leg room but no more width). I'll never fly on that seat configuration again unless I fly first or business class.
I'd rather fly somewhere interesting twice a year on a crappy flight than once every 5 years on a business class flight. If anything I'd much rather spend any extra money I might have on a better hotel than on a better flight.
And anyway even with the best possible credit card you have to be pretty rich to spend enough to earn enough points for a transatlantic business class flight for your family.
Because my employer doesn't pay for anything higher than Y, even on long haul international.
(That, and all the other points made in this thread - which are perfectly valid, and I say this as someone who has a tonne of miles and has flown long-haul business class for leisure...)
You should avoid any flights with the new 737 MAX then. I flew on it recently and I have never been so uncomfortable on a flight and I am not tall (5'9)
Part of the dreamliner pitch is it's supposed to be better for passengers because of the cabin pressure, and... something else, I forget what. Maybe noise?
When it comes to seat width and pitch, though, that's all on the airlines.
The humidity is supposedly also much better, thanks to much more use of composite materials in its construction (corrosion concerns keep humidity much lower on other passenger aircraft). I've certainly heard anecdotally that this was noticeable, but who knows.
I've yet to fly on one so can't claim one way or the other.
And they delivered it. First class on any of these planes is quite comfy even for extended periods of time. But it ain't cheap.
The problem is not that the service doesn't or can't exist. The problem is that it costs more than most people can afford. It's an economic problem, not a technical one.
I flew First Class on a four-class A380 for a round-trip that I took a few weeks ago. It was amazing, everything that I hoped it would be and then some. I ate a fantastic meal, drank top-shelf whiskey and champagne, and then crashed out on my seat, which the FA made into a bed (duvet, comforter, and all) while I changed into the provided pajamas in the lavatory. I got a solid four hours of sleep on my 8-hour flight and then woke up for a proper breakfast. It was expensive but I really do feel that I got my money's worth, especially considering the international first class lounges that I used before the flight, which included a fine dining five-course meal and private bathrooms with showers.
The sofa on the left side of that photo converts into a bed.
In the last six years I've earned and redeemed about 2.5 million frequent flyer points, so I've managed to fly first or business class around the world several times over. Beds in flight, top-shelf champagne, 21 year old Japanese whiskey, caviar, showers in the sky, complimentary limos to and from the airport, free massages at the airport. When I flew first class on Lufthansa out of Frankfurt they drove me across the tarmac to my plane in a Porsche.
Last year I flew to New Zealand and back via Asia in first class. Outbound I flew Cathay Pacific in first via Hong Kong, then returned using Air New Zealand business class, Singapore Airlines first class and All Nippon first class via Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo. All told about 180k miles and a couple hundred bucks in taxes and fees.
I paid cash for this one. I don't have status or miles on AA or BA and probably wouldn't have burned them on BA First if I did. My miles are with another alliance and I'm saving them up for an around-the-world trip with an Asian airline. Cathay/Singapore/Emirates/Etihad are the only first class products worth blowing miles on, IMHO.
I've flown pretty much every single first class long-haul product. There are some great first on non-Asian airlines too. You name Emirates / Etihad. I'd say my all time favorite first class is Swiss, and Lufthansa is great too.
Here's the full list I'd consider aspirational and worth flying in long-haul first:
- Swiss
- Lufthansa
- Air France
- Garuda Indonesia
- Singapore
- Emirates
- Etihad
- Korean Air (on 748i and 77W only)
- Thai
Not quite at the same level but still great:
- JAL
- ANA
- Qatar
- Asiana
- Cathay Pacific
As a drinks nerd, it always kinda annoys me that so much of the good/rare stuff gets drunk in airplane where due to the pressurization your since of taste is considerably altered/decreased. But good gig if you can get it, I suppose...
It usually doubles per class from economy, premium economy, business to first class (for the cheapest tickets). But then of course there is more variance between airlines when it comes to business and first. A cheap first class intercontinental return ticket might be 2000€. More realistically you are looking at 3000€ to 4000€. If you have somewhere to go or a time to be there it can of course be a lot more.
British Airways runs about $7,000-$15,000 per round-trip depending on when and where you fly. It's a relative bargain. You probably won't do a long-haul flight on Emirates for anywhere south of $10K, and probably quite a bit more.
BA is terrible. When I was flying to the Far East regularly they would charge more for premium than finnair or Qatar charged for business. Qatar business on the planes on that route (787/a350) is way better than BA first on any plane.
#anyoneButBA - and I say that as a former top tier BA frequent flyer
I am not so sure. The problem is that you probably would have to rearrange the entire airline industry. You could for instance just run long haul flights from a few places per continent. Then you could engineer an airplane model to just go back and forth in comfort between two places in the middle of nowhere and optimize the hell out of everything. Today everything is so "unorganized" that airline can't even offer a good experience on the ground, which would be the far easiest innovation you could make.
It's not airlines that want to do this, it's the customers who want to fly around the world for as cheap as possible. Nobody values the time they spend travelling, they just want it to be as quick and cheap as possible.
It'd cost you $10,000+ to take a 20 hour flight with a gym and bunk beds. Fuck that, I can stay in Aruba at a 5 star resort for a week at that price.
The problem is that commercial air travel is fundamentally unpleasant. Pack, drive to the airport, park, carry heavy things long distances, wait in long lines, take off your shoes and belt, be inspected infected and detected, stop start stop start, wait for your fellow travelers to cram everything they could carry into overhead bins, get up to let strangers in, bang elbows, endure g-forces, thoughts of death, pressure, noise... unending noise, temperature swings, turbulence, miniature port-o-potties that smell the same as normal sized, bad food, no food, four ounce sodas with huge ice cubes, sky mall (thank God for sky mall), now do that all in reverse, add ear popping, wait for your bag to crash onto a conveyor, wait in more lines, drive in more traffic, feel bad for two days... If the airlines could remove three or four of those problems for say twice or four times the money, it would still be a miserable day. Most people would rather just bang elbows and get it over with for as little money as possible.
I guess it's different as I'm not in the USA, but I generally don't mind flying for <4 hour flights.
Security for me is always a breeze, no need to remove shoes here and I just don't wear a belt. If I don't have checked luggage the process is even nicer.
Flying between Australia and New Zealand is about as easy as it gets. I can check in online, and security takes all of 15 minutes, if that. 4 hours on a plane isn't too bad and usually I'm in a 3 set row with only 1 other person. It's nice to have a few hours to unplug from everything and watch a movie or play Stellaris. Customs/immigration on the way in (to both Australia and New Zealand) is so easy, the whole system is electronic, so the only human I interact with is the customs officer who confirms I have no prohibited items.
If it's a night flight, anything up to 8 hours is fine for me. I've never had problems sleeping on a plane, or anywhere for that matter.
I guess it depends on where you fly. The routes I fly to Europe and South America are typically 5-7K although I have seen less. It also depends on what type of business class seat you want. If you are fine with the older style reclining business class seat you cloud fly Copa for $3500 or even less sometimes. If you want a modern lie-flat product like Delta One or United Polaris than you are going to pay a bit more. I typically can book in advance though.
Depends. I’ve gotten business for as cheap as $2k one way transpacific. Got lucky once and scored ~$900 between Beijing and Bali round trip. Google flights helps a lot if you have flexibility.
Flights in Asia are generally far cheaper and, in my experience, more comfortable. Business class on longer flights in Asia is much cheaper than the same distance in other places I visit. But usually economy has less seats / more space too, at least in the airlines I fly with.
Not true at all. Plenty of people do it both. I flew international first class a few weeks ago and the cabin was 100% full. There were a couple of guys that looked like they might have paid for the upgrade with miles but most people looked like they probably paid cash, especially the ones that immediately went to sleep in their beds and never so much as had a glass of champagne.
As someone who used to fly a lot for work and get free upgrades or use points for them, the amazing mystique of it all wears off after awhile. Even with points you'll find me in my bed right after take off. The drinks and food are fine and all but waking up in another timezone 100% fresh is priceless and adds 2 days to your trip minimum.
At a certain level of income/wealth, the time spent traveling is valued higher than the dollar amount. That’s why premium airlines include first class suites with beds. If those offerings weren’t profitable they wouldn’t exist.
The problem is that the market segments such that these travelers are no longer served by commercial aviation. If you are the sort of person whose time is worth $10K/hour, you fly private. You get your bed, and gym, and first-class suite and attendants who wait on your every move, and you also don't have to go through security or wait in the terminal or deal with other passengers.
The lie-flat business class seats aren't actually for those sorts of people, they are for ordinary corporate mid-level employees who fly for business. I have some Googler friends in Australia who will regularly take the bed-seats on the Sydney => SFO run. The company pays for it - when you're going to be paying the employee $10K anyway for the two weeks they're away, and they're generating well over that in value by having the next 3 months of work synced up with what the home office is doing, why would you not?
Its actually not quite that simple for long distance flying. Most private jets are not G650ERs which have a good long range and can fly a route that an airline might use a 777 or A350 for. The G650 sleeps 10 so you probably wouldn't want more than that for a long hall flight. And I mean if someone was going to let me fly a 650 for the same price as international business I would do it. Figure operating a long range jet runs about $5K per hour exclusive of actually buying and financing the plane. So the flight I am going to take in a couple of months would be roughly $65000 in variable costs.
Even at making 10K per hour ($20M per year) its going to get quite pricey to fly a long range private jet.
Depends. If that nice seat takes up 10x the space of an ecomony seat, it better cost at least 10x as much. Otherwise, the economy class cabin would be subsidizing the first class cabin. As prices ebb and flow, surely this does sometimes happen.
A few years ago I was listening to an interview with (I believe) Tim Clark, president of Emirates, and he said that just by filling up business class - which happens most of the time - alone, their A380 flights from DXB to LHR are turning a profit. So the other 400 passengers in economy are a bonus.
Usually one tends to put it the other way, that economy pays for the trip and business class delivers the profit. Which makes sense because that is how e.g. a low cost carrier operates. While business class only flights are almost non-existent even though that in theory would make more money.
I think they're non-existant because there's not enough demand.
The travel group I work for caters for corporations and luxury travelers, and they'd stop selling economy in a heartbeat if they could (it's a money-loser for the company, as there's little to no commissions on them)
I don't think it has to do with demand as such. It is just hard to allocate resources with business class only flights. With a traditional layout you can oversell economy and upgrade or push people to the next flight. If you are running all your business class capacity on a few flights you can't do that. Nor can you have the same amount of routes. I guess you can say that is because of demand, but it is more because of the model. "Tourist business" doesn't really exist, unless maybe we count Norwegian.
That said, I would love to see an all business Airbus A321neoLR with Thompson Vantage Solo seats.
That’s the stereotype, but in many (most?) cases the actual reason is about time, not brushing shoulders with the merely megarich.
Very rich people spend money to avoid ever waiting for anything or anyone who isn’t a close acquaintance or high status person. This is what private planes optimize for.
> It's not going to happen, because airlines want to cram as many seats as possible, even in business class.
Obviously this seems far fetched, but Airbus seems to be pushing the idea of putting the bunks underneath where cargo would normally go. Not sure the FAA approval requirements to have people down there, but this wouldn't take up any existing seating:
> Airbus in April gave a glimpse of the future when it unveiled at a Hamburg exhibition the sleeping modules that could slot into an aircraft’s cargo compartments. The berths will initially be available on the A330 from 2020, and potentially on the A350, the company said.
More seats means more people, which means more weight, and possibly more requirements for emergency escape given that number of people. Bunks mean just shifting existing people/weight to different areas, and even then only temporarily. During an emergency if there's time they could try to shift some number of people back to seats (some emergencies play out over many minutes, not just seconds).
I'm happy enough to be indifferent on good-airline (JL, NH, SQ, CX, QR, EY, EK, etc.) in newer lie-flat all-aisle business class, and usually happier-than-on-ground in F (esp on something like JL). Premium Economy or economy-with-empty-seats-next-to-me is fine as long as I have good audiobooks and headphones.
I recently did SFO-HND on JL 1 in F (Alaska miles redemption for SFO-HND F, KIX-BKK in C, for 75k miles or about $1250). It was better food than all but the best restaurants, great service, decent Internet, and a comfortable, large seat which turned into a very nice bed. Doing that for 20-40h would be no problem at all.
Airlines don't care one way or another. It's customers that want to cram as many seats as possible as that makes their cost cheaper. If there was a market for comfortable travel that was reasonably more expensive than what we have today it would exist. I know this because it used to be like this. As soon as "sort by price" became the main way people book travel it killed this option.
People want the cheapest flight possible and airlines are serving what the public has demanded.
I think it is worth noting that Singapore Airlines used to have a 19-hour flight from Singapore to NYC, which it flew for 9 years. Having been on this flight, the experience wasn't terrible and there was plenty of space to walk around and spread your legs, despite it being a non-A380 or anything fancy back in 2008. There were always spaces in the back of the plane with snacks and drinks where passengers could relax and look out the window and talk to the stewardesses.
But the flight was first premium economy/business only, then converted to business only, and then cancelled entirely because they couldn't make the economics work out.
Yup, they figured the two-engine plane will be more efficient than the old quad-jet A340. But this time, too, there is no standard economy, only premium eco & business.
Ugh. I have 2 weeks, 8 flights lined up for work soon. Longest flight is 13 hours and average flight is 6. I do 100K miles a year. I do not want a direct 20 hour flight as all this stuff about bunks, bars, etc. will never come. They will just squeeze in more seats. Let's stop wasting money on this and work out faster planes. I want SFO to HND in 2 hours.
> If you are flying that much, you should have the miles to often get upgraded right?
Not really - at least, not "often". The price for upgrades for international flights is high enough that you won't be able to do it for more than a small fraction of flights you take. Unless you're already paying for business class in the first place (which earn miles faster).
Yes for what it is worth I have god status on a single airline (and thus their alliance). I always put in for an upgrade, however most flights are getting quite full (full because the economy is doing well, so making money, but less seats). For the last year I have flown ~50 times and have been upgraded about 2/3 of the time. I work for a startup so business is out for everyone, CEO on down. We do pay for premium economy which on international is better with more room then economy. Of the 8 flights on this trip I have one confirmed upgrade and waitlisted for the others. My guess is I will maybe receive an upgrade on half. Now that being said I have used miles for family vacations (all in business) more then once so there is that. :)
Using your miles to upgrade to business and save some sanity probably trumps using them for a family vacation where you could probably get something on discount anyways (unless you have to travel to India or Australia for family a lot).
I have a lot of miles. Over 2m at one point. Flying and affiliate credit card I use to pay for the trips. Pretty easy to knock out 10-15K a month in travel on the card, which goes direct to miles. The family trips are key as spending so much time on the road means that time is even more important. Round trip to London, round trip to Japan for 3 in business was 100K and 200K miles total for each trip (all 3 tickets) with out of pocket only like $500 and $1000 (taxes, airport fees, etc.) Key is to be flexible on time and flights and destination. I call or visit the airline office (JAL) and say, hey we want to go to London or Tokyo or Singapore or Paris between these dates, business class and are will to fly from these airports in CA. They will come back with flights on them and partners. I just pick one and go. Who cares if you have to make it from SF to LA to make the flight? It’s a cheap ticket. I cannot speak highly enough about the service level at JAL. If you have to travel for work and be away from family, it is key to maximize the return for the family. I will say traveling sucks but FaceTime and the like has made it so much better to keep in touch. I always block my schedule no matter what timezone for a call each day with my family.
That is not necessarily true. Singair is supposed to run all business class on their new A350ULRs from Singapore to NYC. I do agree about faster planes. I am really rooting for Boom to become a commercial success so others will follow.
I like the idea of bunk beds. Instead of 3 people sitting next to each other let them lie above each other. Being able to sleep during long flights would make my life much better.
I spent some time on this a while ago and it's not quite as simple as I'd hoped.
People typically need to be facing/laying along the axis of flight for the seatbelt to work. If you're laying at 90 degrees and there's a big (de/a)cceleration and you have a belt across your waist, you get folded in half hanging off the bed.
If you stack three people on top of each other then the you need egress (space one one or both sides of the beds) which takes up a bunch of space to get back/forward. Most seats have the aisle as egress but you need more mini-aisles for bunkbeds. You might want to divide it and say some people have egress forward and some backward to save the space... but if there's some kind of emergency you want people to be able to go whatever way they want.
If you think about roughly the volume of 3x3 seats (9 pax) then roughly speaking you could have three sets of three bunkbeds. But the curvature of the airframe means you don't have the same height near the window you do in the middle of the plane, and you may take away cabin baggage space. One way to get around this is to make the lowest bunk very low, like an inch off the deck, but that would mean a smaller market as you have to have pax who can get down low or climb up to the top.
All of this is assuming you're trying to go for the same kind of density of pax as a plane has today. If you just want two bunks and charge more, or you want to have a seat and a bunk (so you sleep only half the flight or something then someone else gets the bunk...) then the space requirements all change. You can also just have some bunks or just in the middle rows on a widebody and on the outside have seats.
Lastly, my memory is the flight computers will try to direct smaller aircraft movements in the vertical axis / pitch angle. Again from memory, but people get really sick if they have a bunch of movement side to side or at some other funny angle their vestibular system isn't used to. And with bunkbeds you might not have a window to look out of for a frame of reference to help. This is another constraint on how you lay people out on the plane.
It's all fixable kind-of but not just "put in a bunch of bunkbeds and make the same amount of money / same price per seat-mile". Someone with more knowledge can probably list all the reasons the FAA wouldn't allow it.
> People typically need to be facing/laying along the axis of flight for the seatbelt to work. If you're laying at 90 degrees and there's a big (de/a)cceleration and you have a belt across your waist, you get folded in half hanging off the bed.
I thought airplane seatbelts during cruise were more about controlling vertical movement than horizontal movement. At least, the strongest sudden accelerations that I've experienced under those conditions, and the strongest ones that I've heard about, were vertical.
Similar to tray tables up, they wake you up before landing. It would be no different than the current lay flat seats. Though I guess it would be an issue if there were no seats at all, but I don't see that ever happening (having to lay down the whole time would also be rough!).
Bunks, combined with being able to get up for brief visits to the head, and perhaps a small bar (for food, drinks, and coffee), would be a dream long distance commute for me.
Sounds like a Chinese hard sleeper train ticket. The top bunk is kind of claustrophobic, however, and everyone hangs out on the bottom bunk during the day.
On Virgin Atlantic's flights they have a class called "Upper Class." It is essentially business class with some first class perks (like airport lounge access). Anyway, they have these unique seats that let you lay literally flat[0]. It is the only time I've ever slept on a flight, even most business class don't go flat they just tip back.
They're everything you imagine they are. Some other business class might give you more room or perks, but lay flat beds are extremely rare (only other example off the top of my head is the A380's private rooms).
Lie flat beds in international, long-haul business class are common enough that I consider anything else Premium Eco. For example, Norwegian Premium is sold as Business Class (J), but I've been just as comfortable in British Premium Economy. They are priced about the same.
I like this idea too. Sadly I doubt regulators would go for it without substantial modification - all lie-flat beds have to be in the upright position for take-off and landing at the moment, for example.
Back in the early 90's the Chinese railway system had some cars set up exactly like this. They were called "hard sleepers" and they had a vinyl cover over a bit of padding with a narrowish (i'm guessing) plywood base.
They looked not promising but they were surprisingly comfortable for even two or three day rides. You could either sit or lie down on them.
A modern airliner probably wouldn't go for plywood but if the safety aspects could be worked out the general design would be a big improvement for long haul flights.
I don't think the FAA would allow it. Imagine turbulence and suddenly 20 people get thrown a few inches into the air and come crashing back down. Not safe at all, plus that would feel scary to passengers. You'd also need to find a way to secure them into their bunks to not get thrown to the sides.
Who gets top bunk? Seriously. How do all the old or disabled people climb up and down? How are people belted in? What does an evacuation look like. Lots of people have thought about this concept. It just isnt practical.
I've travelled on night trains in Europe a bunch of times in a 6 bed compartment, and the solution is pretty simple. When you book a ticket, you can choose your preferred bed (top / middle / bottom), and there's a checkbox you can tick if you absolutely need the bottom bed. Somehow it all works out.
It's really neat, because if you're travelling in a group and don't want to go to bed right away you can fold the top beds up and use the bottom beds as comfy benches.
The problem with putting the same thing on an airplane is that it needs a lot of space. Seats offer way more density than bunk beds.
Trains generally dont deal with turbulance. We cant have a situation where a 10000' drop sees people flying around the cabin. And doors/bars on each bunk would be a safety nightmare.
Actually, bunks with some sort of safety netting, and all the other surfaces padded may well be safer. My understand is that most injuries during turbulence are due to flying objects, not the actual motion.
In my mental image of this layout the plane has 1/2 seats and 1/2 bunks. People who want to sit take a seat. People who want to lay down take a bunk. I always imagined it as open ended boxes so you have to climb in kind of awkwardly, but you don't have all of the seatbelt issues. I also imagined a little curtain you could close to block out the light if you want.
Evacuation would be a problem though, especially for people crawling out of the bottom bunk. I've always assumed the evacuation problems were the reason this has never happened.
Yeah, I agree with you!!
I have trouble with 6 hours long flight where you can't sleep properly on those chairs depriving me of the sleep and thus making me feel sick!
Since we are fantasizing here, I would prefer large tubes underground and magnetic lift on coaster style rails that can get me around the world in minutes. Since we have those tubes, we can run fiber optic cables along side them. Until then, I will stick with video conferencing. I am too grumpy to sit in a plane more than two hours.
In China, the largest high speed train network in the world, current technology's realistic speeds for realistic routes work out to around 200km/hr against an 'as the crow flies' distance (reference: recent 6 hour journey). This is actually very competitive with flying by the time you've done the 'get out of town' and 'security theater' parts, then the 'get back in to town' part for sort of 1000-2000km distances. After that, it's better to fly.
There's something over-the-top obscene about this. These would be $10K-$20K tickets, for one thing. And damn, the CO2 emissions. Less than two hops, for sure, but still. Basically, if you're traveling that far, you ought to be staying at least a month. And if you're staying at least a month, it doesn't matter that there are three hops with layovers.
Here's a review of a similar, 17-hour flight that Qantas has started doing from Perth to London that goes into much more detail about the flight as opposed to the hand-wavy article:
The things like sleeping areas and workout areas seem like a stretch - probably upgrades similar to "Economy Plus", so most people will still be stuck with just the bare minimum, which will be similar to what's described in the above review.
Honestly at 20 hours I'd rather they split it into two legs with a pause in the middle. Really not in that much of a hurry that I can't spare the extra hour or two.
IIRC, a lot of fuel is burned during take off. By making the full trip non-stop without a lay-over, saves fuel as there's only one take-off. These sort of 'innovations' are never actually about passenger comfort.
Two legs means you can run the average fuel level much lower (about half) meaning less weight thus more efficient. (or if you prefer you can load the plane with more cargo).
Climbing to altitude is expensive yes but I'd imagine the costs of utilizing an extra airports facilities far outweigh this. (I suspect this plus the perceived advantage of "direct" flights is the reason they want this).
I would like folding chairs that could be made in to standing "beds" through a folding mechanism.
Would not take up an inch of extra space and it would save my joints and back. The angle of airplane chairs is plenty. You could probably get in a 40 degre angle.
What makes you think that they aren't trying to make them faster? There was an article on here not that long ago about companies that are trying to make super-sonic commercial flights work[1].
Money. Space for a “gym” means space with no one it for take off and landing: so that’s an immediate drop in passengers. Similar issues for “bunks”. For it to work they would have to be bunks for the entire flight. That means you probably can’t use them for short haul flights (so your plane is less useful in general), you gain accessibility issues (people who can use seats may not be able to climb into upper level bunks. This is ignoring whether a bunk would be comfortable - you’re going to be constrained for movement (basically to retain passenger count there has to still be 1:1 bed->seat conversion, so beds would be as wide as a chair, and you’d need 3-4 levels of beds).
Then there’s safety - how quickly can you get out of your bed in an emergency is one thing, but how do you also ensure that no one stands on anyone while getting out, etc
ok, the problem is that any gym setup takes space, and that's space that isn't available for seats. Everyone already feels that the space available for seats is too small, and you're not even really moving in those, so you're probably going to have to lose more than one seated passenger for each person you want to be able to do any kind of gym activity.
That's ignoring the many issues for non-gym using passengers: Gym equipment is noisy, and it will be noisier for the people closer to it, so people will want to sit far away from it, so the seats near it will be cheaper, and I suspect the people wanting a gym on a flight are not the people who want to have to sit next to the gym...
Ignoring other issues, that means you're making the seats movable in significant ways, so they have to be engineered to take the loads of landing repeatedly for decades without breaking - that will probably increase the weight a lot (compare the construction of plastic bench seats in most buses, to the construction of long haul passenger buses.
Yeah, I want a cheap flight, but if there was a small perk where I could physically lie flat for ~15 minutes at some point during the flight, I would pay for that. I haven't been able to really deload my spine for pushing 48 hours (aside from some psuedo-yoga stretching while standing) due to further connections and layovers and it sucks.
International flight is an amazing, painful miracle of science and technology. Maybe SpaceX's BFR will make it better :-) But I highly doubt we'll ever see a reasonably priced long-haul flight with a gym available to us peasants.