Chinese Discount Airline To Sell Standing Room Tickets
Spring Airlines, a discount Chinese carrier, plans to ask the government for permission to sell standing room tickets. The plan will likely win approval, since Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang was recently quoted as saying: "for a lower price, passengers should be able to get on a plane like catching a bus, with no seat, no luggage consignment, no food, no water, but very convenient."
The idea isn't so farfetched. Airbus, the European aircraft maker, has been studying the safety issues of standing passengers for years.
Passengers would be strapped to a bar-stool-like stand during takeoff and landing, a Spring Airlines spokesman said.
"It's just like bar stools. The safety belt is the most important thing. It will still be fastened around the waist," airline spokesman Zhang Wuan said, adding that Airbus had told the carrier that the proposal was safe.
The news is a huge disappointment, mostly because it's coming from Spring Airlines and not RyanAir.
Anyway, standing on a plane: a good way to save money and spice up your trip, or a means to the bathroom? Decide in the comments.
Chinese airline may offer cheaper fares to passengers who stand [The Los Angeles Times]
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Comments:
I think this is ridiculous. Airplane is totally different than the bus. the plane will encounter turbulence during flight and the plane will suddenly go up and down. this is why seatbelt is very important during flight. people standing in the walkway during turbulent will likely to injure themselves. Not only that, by having people standing in the walkway all the time will prevent the stewardesses from servicing the passengers in need or bring them food and drinks. I see potential lawsuits against airlines if passengers are hurt during flight. This is a very bad idea.
Edited from the article: "Zhang Dejiang and the president of Spring Airlines had recently toured a Beijing sardine packing plant together, as part of a program to explore innovative ideas to make the airline operate more efficiently."
Reminds me of a joke we had when i worked in china. How many chinese can fit on the bus? Answer: 1 more
No matter how many are on, answer stays the same.
If they can make standup roller coasters surely they can make safe standup accomodations on a plane.
On the roller coaster you are standing with a bicycle-style seat between your legs and a padded steel harness pulled down over your shoulders.
Steerage: Now available on airplanes!
Given the Chinese government's stance on safety, this will no doubt be approved after the right palms are greased.
I knew that our friendly European competitor to Boeing would do anything to beat them on sales, but I can't believe that Airbus is selling out on safety in order to sell a few more airplanes to the Chinese government.
Ask passengers who have survived a sudden ~5,000 foot drop in altitude during turbulence how safe it is to stand in the plane.
I'm envisioning sadness when one tries to get past all the people standing in the aisle to get to the bathroom. Spring Airlines: We don't make you pay to use the restroom - we just make damn sure you can't get there!
Airbus has actually firmly denied that they were investigating standing passengers, and they made the New York Times issue a retraction back in 2006. Wonder if people are drawing on the uncorrected story or if the company was denying a true thing? This certainly wasn't the model that they were even rumored to be exploring, though. And while Spring Air does fly Airbuses, it would have to get them completely reconfigured for this, which isn't cheap.
In short, things aren't adding up, and I'm wondering where the lack of cohesion comes.
@karlsl: If you read the article, I think it mentions that there will be no food and drink served...
I assume no bathroom privileges for the SRO crowd either, correct?
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Actually, I think it's been "steerage" for a while now.
With the TSA acting like the Gestapo (but it may be getting better)...
Why fly?
I think it's a great idea, if the prices are truly low. First, it would have more appeal if you could check at least one bag. Unless you are taking a day trip, you need some clothing, etc. with you.
There are a lot of routes where people would take a commuter-style plane. For example, there are lot of cities that are within an hour's flying time that I would visit for the day if the transportation cost were nominal.
Why not get rid of all of the seats and just stack people in like cordwood? I'm sure they could triple the plane's capacity and if they pack them in tight enough, there will be little movement, even during turbulence.
P.S. This is not a serious suggestion but I bet it's occurred to the airlines.
Ha ha ha, China, and your carefully thought plans.
Wait until your brilliant idea crashes on the shores of America, where 40% of its population turns out to be wider than they are tall.
Bwah ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha.
America: eat another deep-fried Carl's Junior burger. For freedom!
@catnapped: You underestimate the airline industry's ability to generate new surcharges.
$80: restroom fee
$50: plastic bottle fee (shared)
$30: unpleasantly over-saturated sponge hurled at your swollen groin fee (shared)
@humphrmi: Are you for real??? Airbus has been studying that option, it wasn't mentioned in which context. They might have studied that for the case where passenger might be standing around a bar in the plane or something. Anyway this thing wouldn't fly anywhere other than China... There is a reason airplanes seats are manufactured to withstand 100s of Gs, the aerospace industry hasn't reached 100% safety yet...
@humphrmi: Do you have any source for your ~5,000 foot drop figure, or are you just making up numbers? That seems like an extraordinary distance for an airplane to fall. All the accounts I've ever read about such incidents describe people shooting up, banging against the ceiling, and dropping back down. I've never heard a single account of people being pinned against the ceiling for more than 18 seconds--the length of time it would take an airplane to fall 5000 feet *in a vacuum*. If an airplane really fell 5000 feet I'd expect people to be pinned to the ceiling for more than a minute. The accounts I've found of airplanes dropping upon hitting sudden turbulance are usually talking about drops of a few tens of meters, when they even bother to mention a figure.
will there still be room for an open brazier for cooking like Uzbekistan Airways?
What a surprise, coming from a country that exported food tainted with melamine, toys painted with lead.
This is also the country which organizes violence (police and civilian thugs) against farmers to make them vacate their land, which executes convicted prisoners on spec for transplant tourism (foreigners buying human organs without the "donor's" consent), and allows mine operators to kill 3,000-4,000 people a year with no compensation.
No, I'm not surprised at all to hear this.
I wonder how the food and drink service cart will make its way through the aisle with a bunch of people standing in the way?
I've seen pictures of trains in Asia where people are riding on the roof of them. So if that's good enough for trains, why not planes too?
The problem with that is the roller-coaster safety equipment is probably bulkier than an average passenger.
@a5un: More room on the plane for passengers without food and drinks on board. Next: Mandatory enemas for all passengers, pre-flight.
So what if the plane crashes and the aisles are all clogged up with extra people and the plane needs to be evacuated?
@a5un: If YOU read the article, they didn't say that no food or drink would be served to anyone, just not to the standing passengers. At least, that's what it sounds like given the sentence structure.
Where are the barstools going to appear from, and what will the seatbelts be attached to?
Ever been to a McDonald's where a 'life-size' plastic Ronald is bolted (through groin) to a plastic bench so kids can sit next to him and say hi? For some reason, this article reminded me of this.
@Trai_Dep: Another apparently great Chinese idea: naming their airline Chinasss. (if that's a real photo) The extra "s" is for "standing."
@Trai_Dep: Meh, if it's anything like some public buses I've been on, there are, um, bathroom privileges, alright.
@Garbanzo: To be fair, a downdraft could cause a faster-than-freefall descent. And yes, there's about 1 too many zeros in the original post, but that doesn't change the fact that sudden drop=bad news for standing passengers.
I looked at the link and then the thumbnail and thought the airline's name was cheap-ass.
Instead of people standing, why not do bleacher-style seating, like in the back of C130s?
@Coles_Law: Actually, my physics was completely bogus. I'm surprised that no one called me on it. You're correct, it would require a downdraft accelerating the plane at more than 1g to cause people to hit the ceiling. That would be unlikely to be sustained for long at all, even in the plane did drop 5000 ft in total. I agree: there's one too many zeros, and a sudden drop is bad news for unrestrained passengers, standing or sitting.
And I really should consider implementing a rule against posting before breakfast.
@Trai_Dep: I picked a mosquito that was near death from the Advantage off of my cat's fur. Does that count?
@b.k.: Welcome to Delta Flight 348 from JFK International to Newark International. Our flight time today will be 2 minutes 23 seconds.
I was thinking more of heavy straps that you slip your feet into, or maybe ski boots that you lock down. Cheaper than stools right?
@karlsl: This is a Chinese airline. Lawsuit? Typical westerner thinking. Chinese citizens have no right to file a lawsuit.
coming soon, Wing Class! provide your own heat and oxygen. looking in the cabin extra.
![[i42.tinypic.com]](http://i42.tinypic.com/aazqtu.jpg){kind=link}
It'll be bigger news when they end up removing the safety belts too ... if we can get an extra 100 people in, why not 300? They'll be so cramped that there's no risk of anyone falling over!