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Airbus patent has passengers stacked on top of each other

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Ever been left sitting in an airplane thinking to yourself, “Gee, there sure is a lot of unused space in this cabin?”

Of course not.

You’re cramped in enough as it is, trying to jostle for that bit of arm rest while the person in front of you reclines their seat back.

The people at Airbus think differently, and offer up some creative ways of stuffing more people into cabins in these new concepts for cabin design submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in March.

The patent proposes to position an elevated deck structure on the main floor which acts as a seated mezzanine area which would occupy the upper half of fuselage, effectively replacing the overhead lockers.

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Airbus wants to “provide a passenger seat arrangement that permits optimum use of the space in a passenger cabin of an aircraft… but still provides a high level of comfort for the passengers using the seat arrangement,” as stated in the patent application.

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I’m not sure how much more comfortable this may be. Personally, comfort isn’t just measured in how my body feels while seated, but rather the over-arching experience with all that comes with air travel.

Imagine having to deal with the person sitting above you and asking them to keep their shoes on. Yeah, no thanks.

Luckily, as with most patent applications this may never be commercially produced, with only 5 per cent ever seeing the light of day, according to BT.