At just 22 years old, industrial designer Alejandro Nuñez Vicente started a company, Chaise Longue Economy Seat, to commercialize his design for vertically-staggered airplane seats.
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Vicente’s concept is that the center seats of the airplane, i.e. not the outer seats, would be vertically staggered as follows:
Image: 1OFF
Apparently the seats on the lower level recline by scooching the seat forward, pulling the bottom of the backrest with it. Carry-ons for lower-level riders are reportedly meant “to go under the seat in front of you,” according to CNN, but it’s not clear where your legs then go.
Another potential issue I see with the design is that legroom on the upper levels seems kind of constrained, no? That row in the back of the mock-up?
Image: 1OFF
I do understand the appeal—to airlines, not passengers—of a design that can fit more passengers into a plane. My question is, does this design fit more passengers, and if so, in a cost-effective way? I’d like to see some figures on just how much front-to-back space is actually saved by the arrangement. (In the photos it doesn’t seem like much of a gain to me, but that’s just me eyeballing it.) I’m also curious to see projected costs of retrofitting this system, and what exactly happens with the design of the overhead bins that the upper rows are now intruding on.
Your thoughts?
Source: core77