The cabin design revolution

First it was the news that Ryanair and the Chinese airline Spring Airlines were evaluating the use of a sort of "bar stools" in their planes, in order to optimize space use in their aircraft. We can give credit to Ryanair for implementing bold ideas, so we might find them in the planes sooner than many think...but in the meantime other proposals for new cabin lay-outs are coming up.

In this article you can see Design Q's idea of short-haul flying. I personally do not like the fact that you would be seating with the window at your back. I know many people do not care about having a window seat but I am probably not alone in finding that watching through the window one of the highlights of any flight, specially when arriving for the first time to certain country or city.

This would still be possible with this proposed layout, but I have the impression it will be considerably more uncomfortable than in the classical layout, for example one of the weak points of the, otherwise outstanding, Virgin Upper Class is that the seats are also giving their back to the window, so anyone willing to look through the window must make formidable contortions or resign himself to follow the flight path in the video guide.

In any case, and for those interested in this topic, I recommend this interesting New York Times article from 2006.