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This Airplane Seat Redesign That Everyone Loves Makes Bold Claims, But Doesn't Make Much Sense
This one's got us scratching our heads. The blogosphere has been blindly touting the design of Singapore-based AirGo Design's Orion airplane seating system with headlines like "Seat Innovation Hopefully Makes 'Recline Rage' a Thing of the Past," "If This Company Succeeds, We Won't Be Fighting About Reclining Airline Seats" and evaluations like "[With] AirGo's Orion seating system, reclining isn't an issue: The seat behind and the seat in front are designed to prevent one passenger's actions from interfering with another passenger's space." But when we look at the renders, we're just not seeing it. Take a look:
Are you kidding me? First off, look at how absurdly far apart the seats are from each other. If Orange Guy straightens his legs, there's so much room that he couldn't even touch Blue Guy's seat with his toes. What airline do you know that's willing to lose revenue by spacing the seats that widely?
Secondly, yes, the overhead-mounted screens mean that when Blue Guy reclines, Orange Guy's viewing experience is unaffected. But look at Orange Guy's tray—does it look like a laptop is going to fit on there?Then there's this idea:
Yes, it would be amazing if we had one-to-one storage, and a big fat divider between the seats so that we didn't come into contact with passengers who spill over the armrest, but there's a reason airlines don't do these things: Money. All of this "technology" exists, and would be so prohibitively expensive to install that ticket prices would rise to unacceptable levels for your average Economy-price-seeking traveler.
This isn't brilliant design, this is wishful thinking absent any business context and real-world considerations. Can anyone explain to us what the folks raving about this design see that we don't? Are people so easily fooled by renderings and bold claims? Are industrial designers the only ones who actually consider the big picture?
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Comments
I think the big difference between bike concepts and airline seats is the customer. Individuals as potential customers might be willing to overlook certain fundamentals of a bike (like light weight, rigid frame structure, extant hardware and manufacturing processes) to gain certain wow-factor features. Promoting a concept like that isn't harmful or really that ridiculous, its a way of gauging interest and getting a lot of "why not?" ideas out there.
As for airline seats, the customer is the airline, not an individual. So presenting concepts that completely ignore factors like pitch between seats, width of seats, weight, non-flammable materials, crash factors, storage space, cost, etc. is unacceptable because it would never be accepted by any airline, ever, and presents a completely unrealistic view of possibilities to those who don't know better.
PS - the "touchscreens" used on TNG were not a very successful attempt at predicting a future interface, but rather an efficient way of saving $ on set design. Backlit glass and different colored gels were much cheaper than building wall and consoles full of intricate knobs, switches, sliders, buttons, etc.
PPS - I may have gotten that last bit from one of your articles, Rain.
This site often ignores engineering and economic issues to promote an idea regardless of its practicality.
with the 3d renders it may be a more feasible system but still is a want and not a need of the airline industry....
discussion about aicraft cabins: Hysterya.
This project works on that in an evil way to gain attention.
Planes are not square. They are circular and the side overhead compartments are 3/5 the size of what a square would be. You bever have personal storage space for every single passenger unless it's a premium plane. In premium planes, this one is subpar. Someone interested in this plane would ride economy first class.