Even non-regular customers will sometimes choose to pay a little extra in order to fly with a company whose reviews are better, and since websites offer a whole range of airlines which can be organized by flight price and user reviews then the company that would choose the new hexagon shaped arrangement will take a great risk.
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Imagine being on a long-haul flight where the annoying person sitting beside you eating the smelliest food known to man is not the most annoying person in your vicinity, but rather the odd person directly facing you is?
Yes, it can get worse. “What’s even worse than that is the new staggered design also ensures that you’re flanked by two more strangers’ faces, a peripheral inconvenience [that’s] bound to be as anxiety-inducing as the very act of soaring 30,000 feet in the air inside a metal tube that weighs several tons”. The bottoms of the seats fold up to allow passengers to enter into the middle and window seats, saving space and allowing for more seats to fit on the plane. But never fear, the back of seats will still include tray tables and televisions, so passengers will have something to stare at other than each other.
Yet another negative aspect would be that about half of the passengers would have to ride while facing the opposite direction of that of the plane’s.
Thankfully, Zodiac Aerospace isn’t making any promises that these seats will come to fruition; for the moment the design is merely a prototype. It remains unknown whether or not this project will actually be put to use in the future.
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According to Wired, the seating concept is referred to as the “Economy Class Cabin Hexagon” and has been posted to a patent organisation for future commercialisation.
