Originally Posted by
flysurfer
I'm wondering how pax, especially elderly and handicapped ones, are supposed to climb into those bunks, particularly the one on top. I don't see any ladders and I can't envison pax merely using the metal frame to climb in and out of their beds in a dark cabin.
I'm also wondering about the danger of accidently falling out of the top bunk. And I don't find the lower bunk inviting, as it's located almost on the floor, which usually isn't that clean.
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Your second concern shouldn't be much of a worry. I've slept in the upper bunk on Amtrak's Auto Train and there was a sort of harness-like thing on the side away from the wall. It buckles to the ceiling sort of like a five-point racing seatbelt. YOU don't wear it; rather, it provides a protective obstacle to prevent you from falling out. It must work pretty well because if it didn't, you know that in the litigious USA they would have been forced to find another design. It would just have to be adapted for air usage by going on both sides of the bunk.
Your first paragraph is a bigger question. Some people have said that you're "not supposed" to get up if you're in this section. Fine, but what if you have to hit the toilet? You can't very well ask everyone to hold it for the duration of the flight.
I'm not sure I would ever want to fly in this arrangement simply for the reason others have noted—if you find that you can't sleep, you're in for a miserable trip. With current fold-flat arrangements such as those in use on BA or VS, if you can't sleep or don't wish to sleep, you don't have to and it won't bother anyone else (unless someone gets annoyed at your reading light or IFE, but that's their problem). You're free to put your seat up into the "seat" position instead of down into the "bed" position and it doesn't interfere with anyone else. You cannot do this on LH's proposed arrangement. In fairness, anyone who chooses to fly this way presumably knows this when he books (although no doubt there will be morons who get confused or who don't read the information), so I wouldn't be too sympathetic to complaints, but I definitely see this being the sort of "either you love it or hate it, no middle ground" type of product.