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Air Access: Priestmangoode Concept for Accessible Air Travel

By LinYee Yuan - August 28, 2012

in Cars

With Paralympic athletes competing in London this week, the designers at Priestmangoode took the opportunity to rethink air travel for passengers with reduced mobility (PRM). The Air Access concept contains two elements: a wheelchair that can transport passengers onto and off the plane, and a fixed-frame aisle seat on the aircraft which can be mated to the wheelchair to create a regular airline seat.

Access to and from an airplane seat can be an awkward experience for any traveller, but when David Constantine, co-founder of international development organization Motivation, gave a talk at the Priestmangoode offices, the designers decided that something needed to change and that mobility challenges for PRM should be addressed. With over 15 years experience designing aircraft interiors, Priestmangoode is especially interested in the passenger journey—we've written about their Moving Platforms concept focused on getting people to their final destinations more seamlessly and if you've recently been in-cabin on Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS, Kingfisher, Qatar or Malaysia Airlines you'll be familiar with their work.

Air Access addresses the needs of 20% of the United Kingdom's adult population with some form of disability or mobile difficulty. The two-part design allows for:

Ground services staff to assist the passenger into the Air Access wheelchair seat in the departure gate or on the jetway, where there is ample space to manoeuvre.
When seated, the passenger is wheeled onto the plane.
Once onboard, the wheelchair's 360-degree pivoting wheels enable it to be slid sideways into the fixed-frame aisle seat without the passenger needing to get up.
When the two elements are positioned, they are locked together for the duration of the flight.
The chair has a removable seat pad. Many passengers with serious disabilities, for instance spinal injuries, need to sit on their own purpose-designed cushions. Passengers can customise the Air Access seat to suit their individual needs.
Passengers need only to unlock their seat and wheel to access the nearest toilet.
On arrival, ground staff simply unlock the wheelchair seat, slide it out into the aisle and wheel the passenger to the jetway or arrival gate.
Once there, the passenger returns to his or her own wheelchair or zimmer frame, or transfers into the airport's wheelchair.

Air Access from Priestmangoode on Vimeo.

More importantly, the concept could be seamlessly integrated into existing aircrafts without compromising seating space for carriers. The Air Access seat could be installed in every aisle seat of the aircraft and anyone can sit in the seat. As Paul Priestman notes, "As designers we strive to improve things, not just for the immediate future, but for the long-term. A demographic shift is sweeping across Europe: the population is ageing, life expectancy is increasing, obesity levels are rising and PRMs account for a larger proportion of the population than ever before. Air Access is a much-needed concept for the future of airline travel that will provide a pleasant experience for passengers with disabilities or reduced mobility."

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Danny

10 years ago

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As said in previous posts ."I'm sure if we could send a man to the Moon and back"....we can implement 36'' accessibility , removable seats with tie downs! As far as weight, balance, etc.... there are passengers who weigh more then that?...Planes don't land backwards and bulkhead would be ideal for seating with special designed tie downs and airbag. Cost effective?...No....Solution, charge a dollar or so more per passenger to cover loss?
Any airline to take this on, would be a poster child, showing compassion for our special needs individuals and their family's!....Possibly accessible planes subsidized by the Federal Government?...Why not?... We subsidize everything else!
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Al Levin

10 years ago

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To those who want to use their own chairs, please realize that wheel chairs built to safety standards of standard seats would either be made of carbon fiber (and cost 3 or 4 x the high current price) or weigh about 3 x what the chair weighs now. Transporting a standard chair in a car van or bus involves a risk-vs-benefit determination by the people involved. As private citizens, this is done rather informally. For a commercial entity to get involved in this will involve many layers of risk assignment... As long as you are using standard seating, it can squeak buy. When you design specifically for a fragile population, you get into legal territory that is scary and has not been approached yet. (It may be that this can be started more easily in countries other than the USA, where legal rights and responsibilities are not so based on the use of lawsuits!)
Another problem: A power chair weighs about 150-200 lbs not including the passenger. That much weight in one seat of a plane may upset calculations regarding side to side balance or center of mass. Two or more of these might make a plane--especially a smaller plane--overweight and unable to take off! In the event of an accident, a powerchair will be a large heavy unguided missile with a man (or woman) in it!
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Tracy Hurlbert

11 years ago

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I'm impressed, but not too much. I still think airlines need to include removeable seats that wheelchair users can have their their OWN wheelchairs/powerchairs strapped into or locked into. I have MS & my foster sister & I both have CP. Currently, whenever one of us travels by plane, whoever travels with us has to reach across & hold us up because we have weak abdominal muscles & I have a weak neck. We both have spastic legs, so whoever is in front of us or beside us has to deal with feet that are in the way & pushing against the seat in front. Our own chairs have chest straps, lateral supports & proper headrests to hold us up & foot tie-downs to hold our feet down. Also, our chairs tilt & mine also reclines & has elevating footrests to allow me to stretch my back & legs. Blood clots are a serious worry for able-bodied travellers who are told to move around. Those of us who can't should at least be able to reposition ourselves to help prevent clots. As for trays, we both have ones that are fastened to our chairs & can be folded out of the way. For those who don't have them, the airline could have small lap trays stored away for their use. It's pretty strange that inter-city buses, long thought of as the "cheap & less appealing way to travel" now have removeable seats that allow wheelchair users to remain in their OWN chairs, but airlines don't!
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kleo King

12 years ago

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What will be the process for seeing this type of seat on existing and new aircraft? Will there be a long regulatory process in the USA to have such a seat be included in aircraft design?
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Michell Haase

12 years ago

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I love it! Transfers in the plane not only risk injury to the person being transferred, but to the handlers who do the lifting! This is one ingenious way to solve for that. Keep finding new solutions and convincing the airlines to move forward!!!
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