You might remember Airbus passionately denying that they intend on introducing standing room only human steerage cattle cars into their airplanes.

The controversy stems from a New York Times report by Christopher Elliot that Airbus quietly pitched standing room only seats to Asian carriers. The theory apparently being that Asians are already used to fitting thousands of screaming villagers on the rooves of tiny provincial trains for dozens of hours at a time, passengers flying in standing room class “would be propped against a padded backboard.” Just like Hannibal Lecter!

Airbus denied the claims, going so far as to call them “totally idiotic”… but Christoper Elliot isn’t backing down, and he’s posted a very tiny, could-have-come-from-anywhere picture some guy sent him on his blog to prove it.

Weirdly enough, those don’t look too shabby. As an eighteen year old backpacker, we’ve traveled human steerage before, albeit in a train — it’s called the Venice-to-Vienna-on-a-Eurail-Pass option over in Europe. Make it cheap enough and we’d fly that — hell, it beats being crammed face first into some smelly Italian’s armpit for seven hours.

Taking a stand [Ellipses]
Previously: Fly The Friendly Skies In A Coffin

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