A stand-up aircraft seat by Italian seat manufacturer Aviointeriors didn’t receive much love when it was on display recently at the Paris Air Show.
Aviation fans and journalists who tried out the upright seats were so shocked at the discomfort that they went online to spread their concerns.
Aviation journalist Andreas Spaeth took to Twitter saying: “Squeezing my 1.88 m frame into a 23in stand-up seat proposed by Aviointeriors is a no go for over 10 minutes.”
Aviation journalist Kathryn Creedy even went so far as to describe the seats at “torture chambers” while Aviation geek Tim Jue described it as “saddle class”.
So why DID Aviointeriors invent this odd design known as Skyrider? To pack more people onto planes basically.
They say it will allow carriers to fit 20% more people into a cabin, as legroom will be diminished from around 28 inches to 23 (YAY, not).
The company said the Skyrider 3.0 seats weigh 50% less than standard economy seats and have a reduced number of components for “minimum maintenance costs”.
Ok, so they’re cheap…but how long could passengers be expected to straddle one of these?
As far as we know no airlines have bought the stand-up seating. Perhaps that’s for the best.
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