A US design firm has come up with a plan for airline seats that slide sideways to make it easier to board and leave crowded jets.
The logic is persuasive, but the illustration looks awful.
Molon Labe Design’s concept takes on one of the most annoying and for some passengers, stressful things about flying, which is the bun fight when the narrow aisle is full of wide people, who have miraculously bypassed all the carry on bag Nazis to drag half their body mass in oversized luggage into the cabin. Whereupon they seek to rearrange everyone else’s overhead locker space using the same techniques as an old fashioned wool press machine, by crushing everything into submission.
A further, theoretical benefit, is that during taxi and cruise, the middle seat in a group of three would be 7.5 centimetres wider than the others, taking that extra space out of the aisle space, but creating a much wider aisle before takeoff, and once the jet is stationary at the destination gate. Or, dare it be mentioned, during an emergency evacuation.