AcumenDesignAssociates

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  • 'Freedom' seating concept packs even more bodies onto the plane

    by 
    Evan Blass
    Evan Blass
    04.17.2007

    When it comes to rethinking the cabin of your modern jumbo jet, innovations usually involve enhancing the travel experience by offering more leg room, better entertainment, tastier food, etc.; less popular, it seems, are attempts to minimize those few square feet of unprofitable breathing room by packing even more people into what already feels like a flying sardine tin. Well someone over at Acumen Design Associates and the Premium Aircraft Interior Group apparently lost the memo revealing that people prefer more personal space to less, because how else to explain the collaboration's "Freedom" seating concept, which crams in an extra column of rear-facing seats that force you to sit nearly eye-to-eye with your neighbor. This design -- to be presented at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg -- supposedly trumps current configurations by allowing travelers' shoulders to overlap, but which will probably only serve to create even more heated battles over the narrower armrests. In fact, the only advantage we see to practically sitting on top of the person next to us is that when in-flight cellphones are finally given the green light, it will be just a little easier to tell our loudmouth seat buddy to shut the h-e-double-hockey-sticks up.[Via Core77]