New airplane seat design coming for economy?

Airlines are facing some of the toughest challenges when it comes to dealing with the potential spread of coronavirus.

Passengers are forced to come into close contact with each other throughout flights and that close proximity alone poses a major risk.

And then there are other factors like virus particles living on seat surfaces and lavatories and also the ideal conditions for the virus to thrive in which are cool, low humidity environments just like those found in a plane.

So when things start to pick back up, some airlines are going to want to take extra measures to make passengers feel safe flying once again.

One proposed solution to this problem is to completely overhaul and rearrange the seats in economy and provide them with new shields between the seats.

Italian designers Aviointeriors unveiled two new seat designs with this in mind.

The seats feature alternating facing seats with the middle seat facing the opposite direction of the window and aisle seats, similar to some business class cabins like BA.

This design could help with privacy between passengers on the same aisle but you would be looking directly at the passengers in the aisle behind you which could be very awkward.

In addition, there are transparent screens between the seats that are presumably meant to work similar to something like a sneeze guard you can find at a grocery store cashier station.

The seats are said to be made of “easy cleaning” and “safe hygienization materials.”

The second design does not involve seats facing the opposite direction and is called the “Glassafe” concept. This reportedly could be incorporated into many airline cabins since it would just involve installing the shields that surround the seats.

Supposedly, some airlines are already showing interest in these new designs.

And the design company believes that they could have them getting rolled out in 8 to 11 months. (That’s the timeline offered by the design company but consider the extensive testing that airlines would have to implement for these seats to see the light of day.)

One of the biggest problems with this timeline is that a vaccine may be rolling out sometime around that time period.

Once the majority of the traveling world is vaccinated, people are going to feel much more comfortable flying again and a complete overhaul of flight cabins will likely not be needed.

The shields do seem like a step in the right direction but I wonder how truly effective they would be at curbing the transmission of viruses. Would they really stop particles from circulating to nearby passengers? 

It would take a couple of studies to convince me that they are worth the cost and not simply a marginally safer experience. For example, it would seem like wearing masks could be shown to be as or more effective and 10,000 times cheaper.

I do like that they could offer more privacy though, especially if they were tinted. It would be very similar to business class seats that have the privacy shields that extend out. 

But with way more passengers in economy cabins, I wonder if those shields could get in the way in such a way that safety is at risk?

I personally doubt that we will be seeing these shields implemented in airlines on a widespread basis but it does seem like a good thing that others are actively working for possible solutions.

H/T