Designers Offer Insight Into Seat Comfort
Jackie Reddy August 24, 2016
Airplane interior
Difficult to define and even harder to measure, the joyful state of comfort during air travel is dependent upon a myriad of factors.
Total comfort during air travel, especially for economy passengers, is a rare thing, a blissful state that depends upon any number of factors. While those resigned to cattle class on a long-haul flight may regret the decision not to plump for a lie-flat bed, true comfort, the LA Times reports, is tough to define and even harder to measure.
Johannes Lampela, director of design at the LA studio of BMW Group Designworks, explained to the paper that space and weight are the two biggest issues when it comes to creating comfortable seating.
Compromises inevitably have to be made with respect to these two factors and every idea needs to be physically tested before it can be implemented. “Everything is always mocked up and … tested in rounds and rounds of iterations to find the optimal comfort,” he told the paper.
Anthony Harcup, associate director at London-based Acumen Design Associates, added that, “You have to arrive at a one-size-fits-all baseline ergonomic.”
On the whole, airlines do their best to distract passengers from discomfort, using food, on-board entertainment and even mood lighting to ease the strain of travel.
But comfort, explains Lampela, is something that transcends the physical realm. Comfort, he says, also very much exists in the minds of passengers.
As intriguing as this part of the comfort concept may be, there are, in the practical sense, a number of things that passengers, and especially economy travelers, can do to improve their overall ease during a flight.
Sites like Seatguru.com and Skytrax can help passengers to choose the most comfortable spot in the cabin, but the classic advice of moving, drinking water and using neck support, explains Dr. Jeremy Smith of the Hoag Orthopedic Institute, is paramount.
Airplane seats can, “…create stress and strain on muscle groups and…lead to problems,” he said.
But the main barrier to passenger comfort is, of course, money. “This market is currently driven by cost,” said Harcup. Comfort, like any other commodity, comes at a cost, a price that doesn’t always sit well with the vast majority of travelers.
[Photo: Seat Maestro]
I think many folks that travel frequently do as much as they can to maximize their own comfort. But to quote your article: ..."space and weight are the two biggest issues when it comes to creating comfortable seating." I couldn't agree more. That's why it boggles the mind that airlines have narrowed the seat width, lowered the seat pitch and lessened the seat weight by taking out inches of padding giving us "slimline" seats. The main barrier to passenger comfort indeed is money. The penurious pursuit of profit is making coach passenger comfort worse not better. If we could somehow mandate that every airline board director and executive must fly only in coach on any flight longer than 4 hours maybe their thinking might change. Fat chance. But a nice dream.