Bunk beds in aircraft cabins: the realistic prospects | Hacker News Reader

Bunk beds in aircraft cabins: the realistic prospects

aircraftinteriorsinternational.com

60 pointsY_Y79 comments

To squish more ppl in an aircraft while not creating deal breakers of problems is quite the interesting Problem to solve i think.

Like i would be totally ok to have 50cm heigh bunks like in an uboat, but most ppl would probably get quite anxious in such a coffin. If you are not thin you cannot rotate in such a bunk or even put your hand on your stomach, or even fit into it.

>but most ppl would probably get quite anxious in such a coffin

100%, that is absolute nightmare fuel

Dignity -- this is what's forgotten in these designs.

I prefer sleeper trains to intercity buses, even when not needing to sleep, exactly for that: you can travel with dignity. You can sit upright, stand up, or lay down, which you can't do on an intercity bus.

Dignity fades on a 18 hour red eyed flight

I’d sleep on floor if stewards let me

Dignity is closely related to sleep deprivation

I have actually done that. Also laid on 4 seats sideways because they were unoccupied.

>Dignity -- this is what's forgotten in these designs.

I've flown a 15 hour flight at least a dozen times in economy.

Trust me when I say there is no dignity after 14 hours of trying to get a little sleep with your mouth wide open, snoring loudly, drool coming out and your head lolling onto the person next to you.

When I think of that 15 hour flight the very last word in my mind is dignity.

It doesn’t seem likely any designer is forgetting ‘dignity’… It’s just that revealed preferences show the vast majority of people, even quite well off upper middle class folks, nearly always choose to sacrifice ‘dignity’ in exchange for a lower fare.

Some pleasant sleeper busses are a thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRTzEJ8znL0

I get uncomfortable if I’m on the wall side of my kid’s lower bunk bed, and it’s probably 80cm.

It’s an interesting mental exercise, but honestly I think this madness needs stop. If flying is not profitable enough, then we need to plaster the country in passenger rail.

Or just accept the reality that we can travel less. Rails are not very cheap either, at least if they are maintained for reasonable speeds.

Europe is more densely populated and has rail. Train often isn't cheaper than flying.

I like the idea of plastering the US with passenger rail, but I think that'll be very expensive to install and run.

Taking a night train in Europe, especially if it involves a sleeper car, is absolutely not cheaper than flying a budget airline. (Although it may be if you count saving a hotel room.) But trains generally are not cheaper than flying in much of the world.

> If flying is not profitable enough, then we need to plaster the country in passenger rail.

These solutions are targeted at 15+ hour flights - I don't think anyone's building high-speed rail from London to Sydney anytime soon.

plastering the ocean with passenger rail is a bit complicated tough

The thing all the examples shown in the article have in common? They are designed for teeny tiny baby sized people. I'm 6ft 4in and I am willing to bet that none of the designs are for accommodating tall people.

Economy class as it is doesn't accommodate tall men properly either on a pure shoulder width basis as it is, with ever shrinking seat widths and economy+ doesn't fix this either. It's also an airplane only thing, vast majority of seats are wide enough for an extra inch or two of shoulder width from the male average.

I'm not tall, just 175 cm, but even for me it looks like you'd have to travel with no dignity. Those 2-level chairs where you have to shunt your body in...

This is happening even in sleeper train designs too: instead of a coupe with 2 sofas with a table in the middle and 2 (or 4) folding berths above them, you're getting non-convertible suitcase to throw your body in, and lay down all the way, probably looking into a phone. No serious window, no sitting at a table, no standing upright.

Plus, for some reason all the stuff is really thick. Like earlier there were cases for bags under the sofa, with wall made a sheet of steel. Now they're desinging them like 4 cm (2") thick, probably of cardboard, and they just eat space (because train cars have no place to expand, they've been at max widths already).

I have to add that a berth with a rectangular wall behind to lean against, is a torture for anyone's spine -- whether for lower back or for the neck.

Maybe it’s just not for everyone

I think we have this idea that something can be designed to accommodate anyone and it’s just wrong

You can’t fly a fighter jet if you’re too tall or too short

Should we change the requirement so that anyone can fly it? No, we just say you can’t fly if you’re this size

Not everything is for everyone

Maybe it's okay to exclude 6' 4" people from being air crew. I don't think it's okay to exclude them from being air passengers though.

Certainly not from being air passengers at all. Perhaps some seating/bunking options could be unavailable though?

All airlines want: yet another way to nickel and dime passengers!

“Sorry sir, your waist is too wide, that’ll be $100 extra”

People that a really too wide to fit in a single seat are already required to pay for two.

Of course, the definition of 'too wide' has changed over time as seats have shrunk.

Unfortunately the evolution has been happing both on the seat shrinking side and the people widening side.

Good news! Statistically, you're likely to make hundreds of thousands of dollars more just in wages/salary over your career compared to someone of average height, to say nothing of the compounded effect of that extra income if you're savvy about investing it.

Paying for premium cabin seating when necessary ought to be within your means, and frankly seems only fair given the height/wage premium is wholly unearned.

What a bizarre thing to say to someone!

Agreed! Statistics can be very bizarre!

Yes, not in any way sexist or racist!

Quite literally…

It's not like regular economy is designed for tall people, either.

Regular economy is not even designed for normal sized people. :-/

It can be bad or it can be _worse_

I think it could be better!

we're talking aviation here :-)

> teeny tiny baby sized people

seems like the air is pretty thin up there ...

OMG I want this so bad at the economy level. The TU Delft / Flying V design looks totally workable. Take my money!

What premium would you pay for something like that? Say on a flight from SF to Tokyo (or some other long haul flight)

It would save a full day of recovering from a sleepless night cramped in a small airplane seat. When staying a week it would effectively add a day, and justify a 15% difference. And night flights are usually cheaper or sometime even the only option for remote destinations so I'd still take it at a 30% premium for some of the shown systems. It looks super comfortable and offers more privacy. (although you may not want people to have too much privacy on a plane)

Premium? Airlines can fit more people this way.

Which also means less airplanes sold…

It fits the same number of people in the same space, we shouldn't have to pay much of a premium.

How about dual layer chaise lounge chairs with minature elevators to get to your seat?

I honestly love the idea. Remove the cargo bay and overhead bag rack and then stack bunk beds floor to ceiling for tremendous density while still being able to lie down. You should be able to fit way more people in the plane than they do sitting down and do it more comfortably as well.

Where does the luggage go?

In folded down beds that you pay extra for. Also it's possible that some portions are too oddly shaped to fit people so that can also be used for luggage.

The amount of cabin luggage we bring is too much anyway. You can impose small bags only, the rest in the hold.

The hold that the origin of this subthread eliminated? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39802214

It isn’t possible to use whole volume since the floor is structural. Also, the wing spars run through the hold. There is also important equipment in the lower area.

It is impossible to use cargo hold. It doesn’t have the escape routes and would be death trap. Plus, the hold is full of bags.

Fifth Element vibes intensifying...

Eh. You have lie-flat seating today which pretty much has the advantages without the disadvantages. It just comes down to cost.

> You have lie-flat seating today

And Finnair are probably demonstrating the likely direction of travel in that area. Finnair are in the process of replacing all lie-flat seats with non-recline slouch seats that you can lie flat in by shifting your body rather than mechanically modifying the seat. Search "Finnair non-recline" on YouTube, lots of videos, here's one randomly picked[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSKb48_zKqU

> It just comes down to cost.

I want 5-high bunk beds in specially made planes with lower/no cabin floors. Then lay-flat flights can be even cheaper than regular seating.

No floors? How do you go to the bathroom ?

A plane is basically a cylinder. People are normally in the top half, and the bottom half is the cargo area. It has to be pretty close to a cylinder for structural reasons.

By lowering the floor, you get far more space for people, but also far less flat floor area (most of the floor is curved and not easy/suitable for walking on)

I know this is not a direct response but I’m picturing steerage and everyone just pisses off the bunkbeds into the empty, curving bottom of the aircraft below, an open-air sewer in-flight. London experience indeed.

Turbulence would be interesting.

The lie flat economy class remains ever elusive. Air New Zealand have a solution but it's not great.

https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy-skycouch

It doesn't look terrible. And it seems a lot more compatible and realistic than the examples in the original article.

Interesting. Planes used to pretty often have armrests that folded up, so if you were lucky and had a row to yourself, you would be able to do this. I think these days that's rarer due to armrests being fixed and airlines being stricter about seatbelts. Air New Zealand seems to be trying to bring that idea back as an actual product. I think their approach isn't all that bad, as long as the cost for one of the skycouches is about the same as 3 regular seats.

Armrests still tend to fold up except in certain rows. But good luck getting a row to yourself these days. Even getting an empty seat next to you isn't all that common.

It’s been around for over a decade. Only works if you are around 4 feet tall.

Based on a quick check, it’s runs about US$1000 per couch, in addition to the normal fare(s).

For those curious, the Sky Couch option seems to start at around $1000 each way, on top of the normal ticket fare.

At this point, I don't know why they don't just use cargo jets, give us all tranquilizers as we board, and stack us on top of each other like firewood. There doesn't seem to be any level of service that customers won't stoop to accepting in order to save a few more bucks on the fare.

That sounds great; I’d take that option even if it wasn’t cheaper lol.

Don’t give them ideas, they would actually charge extra for the tranquilizer. Snoozing through the entire flight actually sounds like a blessing.

Taking this to the Nth degree, you could optimize the air travel process to an incredible degree. So you make a pod, with tubes for air/water/food(maybe), power for systems/temperature/entertainment, and communications. It's got room for pax and luggage. Big ass airport lobby, you take your sedatives, get in the pod, and then that is it so far as "regular users mucking up the process. The pods get routed to aircraft, aircraft take off, they land, pods routed to lobby, and off go the pax. The pods pass through what's essentially a gigantic dishwasher, sterilizing them, re-dressing with consumables, and the process repeats.

Cabin design could make absolutely maximal use of internal volume, with just a central stem for routing the pods. A smaller subdivision could be reserved for emergencies where passengers need to be de-podded.

I don't know about you, but spending eight hours in a private little pod, sleeping and whatnot, sounds like some sort of personal nirvana compared to a intercontinental coach seat, which - at my advancing age - is getting to be something close to frickin' torture.

I don't have the bandwidth to run numbers on this, but I am betting an airport could probably more than quintuple their load/unload speed. Actually . . shit . . they'd clog their strips really damn quickly unless you did some sort of super optimization on the landing/takeoff/ground ATC. Although you do have the increased capacity per plane . . I dunno. This might be a fun weekend project.

Pods would be much less efficient than current system. You are carrying like hundred pound of pod for each passenger. Would save some on no seats but then lose it to racks for carrying the pods. Also, would need to carry nurses to monitor vitals and revive passengers.

Most important, pods are death traps in crash. Remember the plane in Japan where most of the passengers survived? All of them in pods would have died.

Yeah, the pods got weight, but cabin systems are not in any way weightless, not by any stretch, and you could really strip down the whole interior. Airline seats, just by themselves, are 40kg per.

On the other hand, I defer on the safety issue. Definitely hard to imagine safety improvement here, particularly evacuation . .

> give us all tranquilizers as we board, and stack us on top of each other like firewood.

In the movie The Fifth Element, that is almost exactly what happens to passengers on an interstellar trip. [0] The flight attendant announces they will be using "sleep regulators", where a button on each passenger-pod can instantly make the occupant unconscious.

P.S.: The pods would probably be even smaller if nobody had to care about the opinions of set-designers and actors and camera-crew. :p

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UENRVfdnGxs

I'd pay extra for the tranquilizer!

You can just take a sedative now, before you board.

Only with a prescription (in the US).

People are already taking tranquilizers voluntarily. Have you never met an ambien zombie?

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/planes-sleeping-pills...

Ah, the Fifth Element strategy.

Given how much the quality of the cleaning regime varies between airlines, I shudder at the thought of what you might find in, for example, a British Airways bunk bed.

"The airline did not respond to a request for an update before this piece went to press" ... Would not have guessed that aircraftinteriorsinternational.com had such tight deadlines

Which is a pity because it's a very interesting article

You have no idea how long they waited

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