Airbus, which builds aeroplanes for companies including British Airways, Emirates and Virgin, has submitted a patent for the “Re-Configurable Passenger Bench Seat”.
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The flexibility of seats like this sounds like a good idea; there’s nothing inherently inconvenient or bad about using an appropriate format for certain passengers.
The seat belts can also be arranged to accommodate the different number of passengers.
It’s by no means certain that Airbus will ever introduce its bench seats, but the fact that it’s patented the design certainly makes it a possibility.
Alternatively an airline could place three more slender passengers in the same space or even a whole family with mum, dad and two kids filling the seats. It envisions a bench seating two large people with an armrest between them, three average-sized adults with armrests between them, or two adults with two children sitting in between them.
Exhausted of being crammed into a seat for a long-haul flight overseas?
The first offer more room for two passengers which may suit a business class cabin or provide room for passengers “who require increased space such as, for example, overweight passengers or passengers with restricted mobility”. A second layout would allow two overwight passengers to sit comfortably with an arm rest between them.
If you can get the “bench” name out of your head and imagine the final design looking a bit comfier with proper cushioning and the like, it’s a design that could actually work for passengers as well as airlines.
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Contrary to what you previously believed, there is a way, in 2016, to patent the brilliance that is the bench. There’s no obvious reason to think a bench seat would be less capable of meeting those standards, but getting anything to pass all the required tests is a Herculean undertaking measured in years, not months. Tell us in the comments.
