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30th Jun 2017

The future? Budget airline wants to get rid of seats and make passengers stand

Alan Loughnane

Donegal Airport

We don’t really like the sound of this…

In a quest to drop prices even further, a Colombian airline would be willing to consider pulling out their seats and making passengers stand during their flights.

Unfortunately, for the low-cost, no frills airline VivaColombia, this isn’t allowed.

“There are people out there right now researching whether you can fly standing up,” VivaColombia’s founder and CEO William Shaw told the Miami Herald. “We’re very interested in anything that makes travel less expensive.”

They’re not the first airline to propose his idea with Airbus back in the early noughties debating the idea but no company was ever able to receive regulatory approval.

Civil Aviation Director Alfredo Bocanegra told RCN radio in Colombia this week that it wasn’t something he would be able to sign off on.

“People have to travel like human beings,” he said. “Anyone who has ridden on public mass transit knows that it’s not the best when you’re standing.”

The dream for VivaColombia, in a country where air travel is essential due to mountainous regions which are dangerous to pass by land, is for passengers to sit on barstool like seats which optimises space.

While we don’t like the idea of this, it seems the move would greatly lower the price of flying. But we wouldn’t fancy landing into a windy Dublin Airport crammed in a metal tube with no proper seats.

 

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