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Comment by heeen2 | Hacker News Reader

Are there issues with safety and evacuation or why has it not happened yet?

Money. Space for a “gym” means space with no one it for take off and landing: so that’s an immediate drop in passengers. Similar issues for “bunks”. For it to work they would have to be bunks for the entire flight. That means you probably can’t use them for short haul flights (so your plane is less useful in general), you gain accessibility issues (people who can use seats may not be able to climb into upper level bunks. This is ignoring whether a bunk would be comfortable - you’re going to be constrained for movement (basically to retain passenger count there has to still be 1:1 bed->seat conversion, so beds would be as wide as a chair, and you’d need 3-4 levels of beds).

Then there’s safety - how quickly can you get out of your bed in an emergency is one thing, but how do you also ensure that no one stands on anyone while getting out, etc

Also I wonder what kind of gym equipment they would have.

Perhaps cardio only?

The idea of gym bros dropping heavy dumbbells on an aircraft floor doesn't sound that it would fly.

ok, the problem is that any gym setup takes space, and that's space that isn't available for seats. Everyone already feels that the space available for seats is too small, and you're not even really moving in those, so you're probably going to have to lose more than one seated passenger for each person you want to be able to do any kind of gym activity.

That's ignoring the many issues for non-gym using passengers: Gym equipment is noisy, and it will be noisier for the people closer to it, so people will want to sit far away from it, so the seats near it will be cheaper, and I suspect the people wanting a gym on a flight are not the people who want to have to sit next to the gym...

Oh you thought flying 20 hours next to a smelly guy was bad?

Now the smelly guy is also sweaty from all the exercise.

Bunks may not take up more space, there are long-distance buses with seats that convert into bunks for the same number of passengers.

Ignoring other issues, that means you're making the seats movable in significant ways, so they have to be engineered to take the loads of landing repeatedly for decades without breaking - that will probably increase the weight a lot (compare the construction of plastic bench seats in most buses, to the construction of long haul passenger buses.

Those seats are huge compared to airline seats. If you had that much space in the airline seat this wouldn't be nearly as necessary.

Dunno if it is still the case, but trains used to offer that as well.

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