10 November 2009 | Posted inBlog News & Updates, Weird
What is your ideal aircraft seating?
Picking up from a morning HOK LA’s kitchen coffee chat with Aneirin Owens, who was on the way travelling to Doha for NDIA project, we started talking about what an ideal long flight aircraft seating should be. As much as we both love the branding and high tech concept of Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic, we thought the new Upper Class Suite seating designed by Pearsonlloyd is arguably not too ideal.
Ideal for full body resting, but would you rather be facing the aisle with service and passenger traffic while you are sleeping?
When you are awake, would you rather facing the window look out for the view or facing the aisle for quick service?
The diagonal position in relation to the monitor definitely is not the best position for watching movie, would you rather have guests coming over to play chess with instead?
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To follow up; I’d heard good things about the Air New Zealand seating arrangement in business class and recently found out, without flying with them, what it was. It’s a herringbone pattern where all seats face outward on a diagonal. Nobody has to corss another person to get into the aisle and each seat is a little cocoon that’s pretty much closed off to the rest of the cabin. I’m not sure what this in terms of square feet (or meters!) per person but it seems to be the ideal arrangement. The layout is in the latest Fortune 500 magazine(May 3, 2010 p.72).
Apparently the herringbone is increasingly being adopted in the business class section of airlines, including Air Canada, Delta Air Lines, Air New Zealand, Virgin Atlantic, Jet Airways and Cathay Pacific. I flew Cathay Pacific last January and yes… must confirm that the zzz factor works:)
Also Virgin Atlantic did file a lawsuit against the seat manufacturer, Contour and airlines that have purchased and installed herringbone seats in their aircraft. Virgin Atlantic claims that they own the patent to the seats and that the other airlines have violated copyright laws.