The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Only marginally better than a shipping container

Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, Airbus has taken out a patent on the worst airplane seats imaginable:

Airbus’s patent says that traditional seats cannot be narrowed any further, or the pitch reduced much more, in order to accommodate extra passengers. Therefore, carriers will have to redesign the seats if they want to cram in more flyers. Its suggestion is a fold-down saddle, a small backrest and a couple of retractable armrests. Certainly no tray-tables, underseat storage or pockets to keep your sick bag in. This, it reckons, will allow airlines to wedge a third more people on to a plane—that’s an extra 63 passengers on one of Ryanair’s Boeing 737-800s. It would only be for flights lasting "a few hours" but judging by the pictures in the patent application (above), it doesn’t look like a fun ride.

Their blog entry has an illustration that I simply can't reproduce out of sadness.

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