Hacker News Reader

Comment by howlgarnish | Hacker News Reader

I'm still waiting for an airline to roll out proper lie-flat seating in Economy, like couchette/sleeper trains: just stack three bunk beds on top of each other. Unfortunately safety regulations make it difficult if not impossible to implement this, and prohibitively expensive for an airline to even try.

View on HN

Air New Zealand is trialing this. I guess for a country with such distances to anywhere, not surprising they are pioneers in flight comfort.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/26/lie-flat-beds-...

But it seems like this is in addition to a seat, not instead:

> “The concept is designed as a pod you go to during the flight,” she said. “You will still have your economy seat separately for the other portion of the flight.”

Which of course avoids all the regulatory problems of evacuation during landing, etc. But also must make it expensive -- if you are buying twice the floor area, then you could have a business class seat.

On long distance flights weight becomes bigger problem than volume. Singapore airlines 20 hr flight has no economy at all and I presume volumes of space in cargo area.

That said seats that can fold into three level bunks could be possible, but airline has no incentive to make cheaper business class. It’s their best interest to make economy as bad as legally possible to force you into upgrade.

I had an economy row on intercontinental flights for myself a couple of times (back in 2009 during the financial crisis, when flights were routinely half empty). It definitely helps, but you can't fully stretch out if you are taller than 5ft and it doesn't compete with business class.

Interesting. Have there been many attempts that failed?

I'm not aware of any that made it past the concept stage. My understanding is that takeoff and landing is the tricky part, since passengers need to be in an upright position -- but do they really?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com