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When geeks do evil: standees on a plane

by
MaryAnn Johanson
 on April 25, 2006 8:57 PM | | comments (10)

Greg Saunders at Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World digs up a possible geek influence for the hideous concept of standing “seats” to which The New York Times introduced us today, to our collective horror:

Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.

The concept?

Standingseat

Damn, that’s evil. And the engineering geek who thought it up may have been inspired by... well, check out the This Modern World link.

Me, it makes me think of this:

Slaveship

categories:

10 Comments

by Yaslind on April 25, 2006 9:01 PM
Yeah, and they're saying we'll eventually have to pay extra just to get "sit down" seats. Ridiculous.
by tinman on April 25, 2006 9:33 PM
thats the most scary thing i ve seen in my life.....
by Harley on April 26, 2006 12:53 AM
*cries* It's true! It's all true! I'm with my mom, no will will ever scan my iris, damnit, no matter how crazy the world is! Standing room my arse...
by Andrew Ducker on April 26, 2006 4:41 AM
Why don't they turn it on its side? I'd happily have a couch/lying space all the way there, even if they _were_ stacked...
by David C on April 26, 2006 11:28 AM
Andrew, as a guess, "rack" space might be harder to "secure." "The Federal Aviation Administration does not mandate that a passenger be in a sitting position for takeoffs and landings; only that the passenger be secured." On one level, we shouldn't dismiss "weird" arrangements out of hand. A lot of our furniture arrangements are based more on custom and happenstance than ergonomics. That "standing" seat might be more comfortable than it looks. But even if it is, the more I think about it, the more problems there seem to be. What about kids, or even especially short/tall adults?
by Tonio Kruger on April 26, 2006 8:49 PM
Well, there is always Amtrak, you spoiled people... ;-)
by Tonio Kruger on April 26, 2006 8:52 PM
Not much the fact that a lot of people in this country consider themselves lucky if they can afford to take a bus... (Says the guy who used to travel between Detroit and Dallas every Christmas via either car, train or bus and took a plane ride only two times before he was thirty. Plus I had to walk uphill to school and back--in waistdeep snow--even in summer...)
by Danielle on April 27, 2006 10:25 AM
I actually like this idea because my back kills me when I have to sit too long (like I have to do 45 hours a week at work). Standing is way more comfortable.
by MaryAnn on April 27, 2006 10:42 AM
Well, there is always Amtrak, you spoiled people... ;-) === No, there isn't, not in much of the U.S. Amtrak is a disaster because even though it's supposed to be something like a nationalized railroad, it does not get the kind of subsidies that the airlines do, not to mention those given to every industry that have anything to do with automobile travel. And the result of that is that even in places where Amtrak IS an option, like the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak can be MORE expensive than air travel or road travel. It's way cheaper for two people to rent a car and drive from New York to Boston, or New York to Washington -- even accounting for fuel costs and tolls -- than it would be for those two people to take Amtrak.
by David C on April 27, 2006 11:15 AM
What's scary is that Amtrak is still expensive *despite* being heavily subsidized (much more than the airlines are, at least on a cost-per-passenger basis.) IIRC the last time I looked into the issues, it's partly because of Amtrak being notoriously badly managed and bureaucratic, but also in part because Amtrak is required to run a bunch of expensive cross-country routes nobody would much want even if they *were* cheap. But there's probably no inherent reason a private railroad couldn't make a tidy profit running trains along the Boston-Washington corridor at a price competitive with air travel.

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I'm MaryAnn Johanson, writer and editor, and this is my scratch pad, idea-jotter-downer, portfolio and resume, and general hang-out blog.

• film/TV/pop culture critic at FlickFilosopher.com
• contributor, Film.com
• member, Online Film Critics Society
• member, Alliance of Women Film Journalists
• member, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences

Location: New York City
[email me]

photo by David Speranza
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