Travel season is approaching, which means families and solo adventurers scrounging together funds for a summer getaway. If they plan on flying to their destination, they have a record number of options to choose from. Though the overall basic economy seat price hit its lowest points in history (and at its smallest ever size), airlines have also realized passengers will spend incrementally more to upgrade their experience with added niceties like extra legroom or faster boarding.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Those fortunate enough to fly business class are also being served up some of the snazziest new seats on the market.  Regardless of where a passenger sits on a plane, though, maximizing space and comfort is always a major concern. Particularly on longer flights, and airlines and designers have gotten more creative about outside-the-box ways to let more passengers stretch out their legs or travel comfortably-ish with larger parties.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Here are a few designs pushing the idea of creating and saving space forwards in modern aircraft.  Air New Zealand’s “SkyNest” lets you rent a bed in the air  Would you like to pay $500 for a bunkbed? Credit: Air New Zealand For most travelers who’ve endured a flight lasting double digits of hours, the thought of laying down in the air is still the pinnacle of comfort. Though fully flat recline options have existed on private planes and expensive first class flights for decades, the option was always out of reach for the overwhelming majority of passengers. On Air New Zealand, that’s beginning to change, albeit with a major catch. Those traveling on the roughly 16-to-18-hour flight from New York to Auckland will soon have the ability to book what the airline calls a “Skynest.” These semi-private bunk beds, each come with its own mattress pad, pillow, and blanket. Any passenger, even those in the back of the plane, can book one for around $500, making a comfortable sleep actually attainable. Passengers must silence their device notifications and wear headphones while occupying the bunks. But here’s the catch. Each pod can only be booked for four hours. Once that timer runs out, lights flicker on signaling that it’s time to head back to their upright seat. If they don’t wake up, a flight attendant will reportedly tap them on the ankle, gently nudging them that it’s time to scram.  Skycouch bring the sofa experience to the skies  Credit: Air New Zealand If the Skynest focuses mostly on individual comfort, another Air New Zealand economy option called the “Skycouch” puts the family front and center. As the name suggests, this option lets passengers rent out a row of seats and use them as a couch, something especially welcome for couples or parents traveling with small children. Air New Zealand reserves certain rows on long-haul international flights exclusively for Skycouch bookings. The seats in those rows have leg rests that can extend out to 90 degrees. If all three are extended, you’re left with a kind of makeshift pullout couch. It isn’t a room at the Four Seasons, but at around $750 (on top of the price of your ticket) on a flight from New York to Auckland, it’s still a fraction of the price of comparable accommodations in business class.  Skycouch appears as an add-on purchase when selecting seats, with one fee applied for the entire party in the row rather than per seat. That, combined with the option to add an infant pod, means families traveling with young kids have at least a fighting chance of avoiding a sleepless, screaming-child situation. United Relax Row could make traveling with a young child bearable  Credit: United Airlines  Air New Zealand isn’t the only carrier interested in bringing couches to the back of the plane. United Airlines recently announced its own take on the concept, calling it the Relax Row. Just like the Skycouch, these rows of seats have adjustable leg rests that, when raised, convert into a flat surface large enough to fit a couple of adults or a parent traveling with a small child. Solo travelers can also book the whole row for themselves, if they really want to stretch out. Aside from the raised leg rests, Relax Rows come with fitted mattress pads, a blanket, and a few extra pillows. Though the specifics will vary, United told Business Insider it plans to roll out up to 12 Relax Rows across more than 200 planes by 2030. The airline has not announced what it will cost to book one, but it is being marketed as a mid-tier offering between economy and premium economy. United Polaris Suites are both a boardroom and bedroom  Credit: United Airlines  While the airline industry continues moving toward economy passengers paying slightly more for added comfort, there’s still plenty of thick wallets and corporate credit cards bankrolling more extravagant experiences. One of the latest examples is United’s upcoming Polaris Studio business class suites. These compact private spaces function like a meeting room and bedroom in one. A bedroom, United emphasizes, outfitted with Saks Fifth Avenue bedding. Travelers in these booths can choose between a standard or companion ottoman setup. The latter option means the passenger can welcome a visitor between takeoff and landing for a brief chat or business meeting. Each of the chairs in the suites can lie back completely flat. And, as if there were any doubt, each of the suites comes with a massive screen for catching up on all those movies that only ever seem to get watched in a plane.  American Airlines is filling up planes with luxury suites  Credit: American Airlines United isn’t the only U.S. carrier pushing the limits of luxury. American Airlines recently debuted its new Flagship Suites on Boeing 787-9s, which feature large lie-flat beds, “headrest wings” for added privacy, and extra personal space. American is certainly banking on selling quite a few of these. On its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, the Flagship Suites reportedly make up 51 of the 244 total seats. NASA-inspired STARLUX’s ‘Zero Gravity’ chairs   Credit: Starlux Airlines  While American Airlines tries to expand the luxury experience to more areas of their cabin, Taiwanese carrier Starlux adopted the opposite approach. Their extremely expensive, high-end first class offerings have been called  “the rarest first class” available on a major carrier.  In addition to featuring an ovet-the-top, highly private experience, these selective A350-1000 tickets also feature fully reclinable chairs with a NASA-inspired “Zero Gravity” mode. Starlux claims these chairs can help lower a passenger’s blood pressure on long-haul flights. They also have an integrated massager. To talk or not to talk: Swivel chairs give fliers a choice  Most business class and first class seats optimize around individual comfort and efficiency, but these swivel chair mockups from Airbus put the emphasis on pairs. The design envisions a staggered row of larger business class chairs that swivel in multiple directions, meaning two passengers can choose to face each other for a chat. The seat itself comes outfitted with many of the standard business class amenities and can be preprogrammed to each passenger’s preferred settings The main problem with this configuration (and likely why it hasn’t made it onto aircraft yet) is that this staggered approach takes up even more physical space than a typical business class design, meaning a carrier can only realistically fit a handful per flight. BMW immersive seat is like stepping into a VR headset   Credit: Thales /YouTube Many casual fliers see a plane ride as a forced time to disconnect from the always-on nature of smartphone-based life. This business class seat idea, offered via a collaboration between BMW Design Works and Thales, goes the other route and essentially drops you inside a computer.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The screens even have eye-tracking capability and can connect to the passenger’s phone to import their music and change cabin settings to that rider’s passenger’s preferences.  And, of course, there’s also wireless charging so you don’t have to worry about stray USB cords interfering with the immersion SkyDeck adds an 360 degree observation deck to planes  Credit: Windspeed Technologies  For travelers eager to feel like they are truly flying in a more bird-like experience, they may soon have their solution: this observation deck-style seat. Designed by Windspeed Technologies, these “SkyDeck” domes would jut out from the top of an airplane main cabin, giving the passengers a 360 degree view of the vast sky around them.  Though it’s still a concept design, Windshield has reportedly pitched their bubbles at aviation converters and received positive feedback. Interest notwithstanding, it’s hard to see how these designs could neatly and safely map onto existing commercial aircraft. Chaise Lounge design lets eve basic economy lie down  Screenshot: Sam Chui /YouTube  Not every flight calls for a full-on private bedroom. Often, passengers simply want a decent amount of space that makes them feel more like a human and less like livestock. That’s the general idea behind a “chaise lounge” style seating concept designed by former Delft University of Technology student Alejandro Núñez Vicente. This double-decker approach removes the overhead baggage compartment to create a tiered, reclinable seat pattern. In theory, the staggered layout gives each passenger more space to stretch their legs and recline further back, but the end result can look a bit visually…jarring. Núñez Vicente told CNN his goal with the design is to “change the economy class seats for the better of humanity.” That’s admirable, though it’s unclear whether major airlines will buy in. There are also unanswered questions about the overall safety of such a system—namely, whether stacked passengers could feasibly extract themselves in an emergency. That could pose a serious problem given how evacuations, unfortunately, have seemed less theoretical by the day. Toyota Cloud Capsule sacrifices overhead bins for better sleep Credit: Toyota Boshoku Getting a proper night in Economy class is much easier than ones, especially as the overall size of seats and legroom keeps shrinking. This unique design by car component manufacturer Toyota Boshoku tries to solve that problem by sacrificing  luggage space for the sake of a bed. Though the Toyota name is best known for dependable cars, it’s also interested in making air travel more practical.  The concept, which was shortlisted for a Crystal Cabin Awards in 2021 takes the traditional overhead bin area used for suitcases and converts it into a private enclosed capsule where a traveler can lie flat. In theory, passengers would sit in their assigned seat as normal and then climb up to their own personal capsule whenever they want to stretch out or simply get a bit more privacy.   Zephyr stacked seats bring double decker design to planes Image: Zephyr Increasing the individual square footage each passenger  isn’t the only aerospace designers are rethinking cabins. Increasingly, they are also turning to bizarre, out of the box approaches getting more bodies in a space. One of those is the double decker  “Zephyr” chair from Zephyr Aerospace.  The basic concept here is to take two rows of basic economy seats and stack them on top each other in a slightly staggered arrangement. That altered layout means, in theory at least, each passenger can recline their chair entirely flat. The idea was reportedly inspired by bunk beds currently available on long haul bus rides.  The down side? Though possibly more efficient than current economy seats, the stacked and crammed layout also evokes some slightly dystopic sci-fi imagery.  Coffee House Cabin reimagines the barista experience mid-flight   Credit: Alejandro Lozano Robledo When it comes to reimagining airplane interiors, possibly the most unique among the bunch is this idea for a kind of “Coffee House Cabin,” envisioned by students from the University of Cincinnati. As the name suggests, this design would rearrange rows of seats in large aircraft so that the middle three are inverted toward each other, with a large flat table separating them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The core idea  is that a passenger would have their normal chair but then could walk over to the coffee lounge-style area if they wanted to focus on getting more work done or have a greater sense of community with fellow fliers.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Front facing seats could make for an awkward experience.  Credit: Heinkel Group / Facebook  Every few years or so, new air cabin designs emerge that attempt to replicate the more casual feeling of a train and reinterpret it for air travel. One of the more recent examples of that was these front facing seat designs offered by Heinkel Group. Here, rows of passengers would face toward each other with thier knees nearly touching each other , mimicking a small cabin in an above-ground train car.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Related: [The best way to sleep on a plane, according to science] Ideally, this could lead to easier and more engaging conversation with fellow travelers. On the flip side, though, this definitely doesn’t seem like the travel method of choice for anyone uneasy with eye contact.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Straddle seats test the limits of optimization cruelty  It’s baaaaaack! The AvioInteriors Skyrider saddle seat is returning to #AIX18 after its controversial reception. Will the fact that 28” is normal on low-cost carriers mean that a 23” squat for a (very) short flight seems more #PaxEx palatable? #avgeek pic.twitter.com/zLylr91NiT— John Walton • @thatjohn.bsky.social (@thatjohn) April 10, 2018 And, of course, no list of odd or unusual airplane chairs would be complete without the viral, controversial “Skyrider” straddle seats proposed by a company called Aviointeriors. Sometimes referred to by critics as a bike seat squat, this proposed design is possibly the greatest visual representation so far of what happens when designers optimize for fitting as many bodies as possible into a plane, with little regard for their comfort or dignity.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The chairs fold up and down, revealing a bicycle-chair-like bottom where passengers sit (or more accurately straddle) over it. Once expanded, the seat has just a 23-inch pitch, making it far shorter than the smallest chairs on mass-market carriers today. The seat snaps back and lies flat when it isn’t in use.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ These design choices are meant for one thing and one thing only: saving cabin space. Though airlines have reportedly expressed interest in these kind of nightmare chairs in the past, most government regulations (thankfully) have prevented them from becoming a reality.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The post 15 innovative, wacky airplane seat designs appeared first on Popular Science. ...read more read less