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Comment by greggman2 | Hacker News Reader

wish they made double or triple decker capsule hotel style beds for long flights.

I’d love a capsule-hotel-style option. I don’t care how cramped it is. I feel like you could stack some bunks that take up the same cubic-space-per-seat as existing seats. I only need enough space to lie sideways with my phone in front of my face and a USB port and I’d travel a lot lot more.

Context: Physically disabled and have issues sitting on chairs for longer than 1-2hrs before my legs are in excruciating pain, but also, before I had this issue I would’ve loved a submarine-bunk option.

You could, and you'd likely create an evacuation pathway nightmare in the process.

You could eject the sleeping pods out the side of the plane with a small thruster rocket and a parachute.

Ignorant question, but: do we actually have at least one (preferably more) documented cases of where the evacuation happened and was successful?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 ?

> I only need enough space to lie sideways with my phone in front of my face

This sounds like it'd get a lot more uncomfortable than sitting pretty quickly.

Each to their own. I sleep on my side so that’s all the space I’d need to rest and read or watch something on my phone for a while then sleep for the rest of the trip. I’d rather sleep through flights than sit uncomfortably crammed into the pathetically small chairs they give you these days.

Beds in Asia often don’t have a lot of padding, they aren’t designed for side sleepers, you would be on your back quickly. Incidentally, a wooden chinese bed will cure you of side sleeping in a few days if you ever want to go that route. I found my sleep was better, but I reverted back to side sleeping quickly after getting to use a normal western bed again (after about six months of using the Chinese bed).

If you're just sleeping I can see it being fine. I'm just concerned that doing anything other than that will be uncomfortable.

They do, you just have to be flying the plane to get access to them :)

Check out crew rest areas: https://www.airlinereporter.com/2014/10/inside-look-crew-res...

Same. Almost 30 years ago, I took an overnight slowboat in Asia with my parents where each passenger had a thin mat (half-inch thick, 2' wide). People sat up, lay down to read or sleep. It was great. I've been on sleeper buses in China and triple-bunk sleeper trains in India and would vastly prefer those to the airline experience.

Challenges with capsule-style beds could be accommodating families and handling meals?

Hard sleepers in China have everyone hanging out on the bottom bunk during the day, their are three levels of bunks, and the top bunk is not for the claustrophobic. Still a bit more comfortable than flying economy, and pretty cheap also (though they are disappearing as HSR trains replace them).

I took an overnight ferry from Shanghai once to putuoshan (maybe in 2004?), I’m guessing it was similar to your experience 3 years ago.

Yeah, we took hard sleepers in China in the early 90s. Loved how chaotic it was. You have to be comfortable with strangers around though. I remember the sleepers in Thailand were really hot with fans everywhere, but had curtains at least - more like submarine bunks. Also have great memories of a 3 day ship from Shanghai to HK, just not the sleeping quarters. We would learn Mahjong from the elderly Chinese and play the 2-3 arcade games.

I've taken a sleeper bus in Asia before but with my 6'5 the short beds are highly uncomfortable. I'm a big fan of sleeper trains though.

My brother and I got on a sleeper bus in China. I'm 6'3, he's 6'9. Everyone saw us look wide-eyed at the small beds and they cracked up laughing. We got swapped to the wider 4-5-wide bed at the very back. Phew!

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