Though most airline manufacturers and insiders have scoffed at the idea of “standing room” seats on jets, someone has come up with an airplane chair that is simultaneously more feasible and more uncomfortable. Meet the crotch-crushing SkyRider!
The creation of Italian design company Aviointeriors, the SkyRider is set to be shown off at next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in California.
Here’s how the designer describes the seat:
For flights anywhere from one to possibly even up to three hours … this would be comfortable seating… The seat … is like a saddle. Cowboys ride eight hours on their horses during the day and still feel comfortable in the saddle.
Yes, maybe professional cowboys and horse riders don’t mind being on a saddle all day. That doesn’t mean your average business traveler wants that huge bump pressing into their precious parts for several hours. One turbulent flight and we’re all asking for ice packs…
While Aviointeriors says several airlines have already expressed interest in the seats, an FAA spokesman is skeptical such a seat could work out in the real world:
While it’s not impossible, it’s difficult to conceive of a standing seat that would be able to meet all applicable FAA requirements and still be cost-effective.
How cheap would your ticket need to be to get you to saddle up on the SkyRider for a 3-hour flight? How about a 6-hour flight?
SkyRider airline seats pack fliers into 23 inches of space [USA Today]
More From Consumerist
-
American Airlines Employees Scoop Up My Wallet, Save The Day
-
Extra Fees For Aisle & Window Seats Means Families Who Fly Together Won't Always Sit Together
-
‘Passenger Of Size’ Policies For The Largest Domestic Airlines
-
Is American Airlines Misleading Passengers Into Paying Extra For Seats?
-
It’s The 21st Century, But I Can’t Pick My Seat When Booking A Flight Over The Phone
Looks like next years design will be a big hook they stick you on and a chain moves you along.
Obvious reason why she didn’t sit behind on the second row. show us the leg room behind the seat.
She’s also monopolizing both arm rests.
I’d be ashamed and a failure as a Dad if I subjected my family to that.
I’ll walk, thanks. Ouch! And there is no way those things would make it past FAA standards testing. Ever see crash tests on airplane seats? Brutal. Those things would fold up like a lawn chair.
Good thing the ADA will never allow this in the US. Airlines are expected to make reasonable accommodations for disabled passengers. Good luck getting anyone that can’t support their own body weight into those seats, not to mention amputees.
I assume it vibrates. I’ve seen a lot of lady porn with seats like that.
As someone who has ridden horses, and had several terrible things happen when doing so, no way would I ride in a plane with this bullshit. Telling me riding in this seat is akin to riding a horse for 8 hrs does not make we want to sit on this muh fsukin seat. It reminds me how 1 horse rammed my face into tree branches after repeatedly and purposely attempting to step into holes in the field and how the other horse dragged the entire right side of my body against the metal of the round riding ring when it wasn’t busy slamming my right side against the ring rails causing my arm and leg to swell up a lot. So yeh don’t think I’m setting foot on a plane with that crap. Next up will be Ryan Air putting in an order for these to retrofit all of their current planes.
Many one hour flights turn into two or four hour flights.
Those look like high chairs.
As far as what it’d take to get me to fly in one, assuming I’d use one at all, the fare would have to be single digits before the required taxes and fees, for a ~$40 total (at most).
Won’t meet FAA regulations, ever.
End of story.
I concur. I work in a crash test lab that does this testing.
ive ridden stand-up rollor coasters with similar designs. Im somewhat tall (6′ 3″) so it wasnt terrible for me, but thats mostly becasue the force of the ride pushes against the seat to keep the weight off your crotch. I think this would be slightly better than standing on a bus ride, which I have done many manhy times.
Id probably give it a shot. Plane rides are much less bumpy than bus rides, and Ive had to stand for 8+ hours at work before, so doesnt seem like a big deal, especially for the 30-45 minute flights I take from island to island in hawaii.
I’m not in any way trying to say you are wrong, but the percentage of people like you, who think this might be okay for them on some short flights at least, is probably pretty damn low. The only time I would even consider a seat like this, personally, is if it was on an evacuation vehicle and a category 5 hurricane was bearing down.
Please tell me you’re not comparing a 2 minute roller coaster ride with a plane trip.
These look like roller coaster seats.
OK, let’s say this works for a one hour flight and you’re not cursing Italian designers after that time. How is it going to feel after a 4-6 hour stint sitting on the tarmac?
When is one of the airlines going to just finally have the guts to stand up and admit they’ve reached the point where they loathe all of their customers?
LOL. wtf.
How about a vest with a hook on it, and they can hang people on a rotating rack like clothes?
I’ve got stubby little legs, and I’d be concerned that they’d just kind of hang off the little butt-shelf chair and fall asleep. If there was a place to put my feet up on the back of the seat in front of me, I might try it.
Has any one heard of the term “Saddle Sore?”
If I’m looking at the picture correctly, the passenger’s legs would actually slide up under the saddle of the person in front of them. Dear God, I alread hate it when some fat SOB yanks on the back of my seat when the get up to go to the can, but now I’m going to get a prostate massage from the knee of the passenger behind me.
In general I don’t mind airlines offering cheaper seating options (it just makes flight available to more people), with one caveat: some businesses/schools/etc. *require* you to take the cheapest available seating when traveling. If I want to save myself a few bucks, fine, but if you tell me I have to go? I want a real chair.
Show me a picture of someone sitting in the second row of those torture devices who looks comfortable. Guess not….
All the pain of riding a bike for “possibly even up to three hours”… yay.
Ridiculous. That looks so damn uncomfortable. If they try to do this, I just won’t fly. They won’t get my money by making it WORSE.
Next they’ll make a Sybian version.
These would be harder to keep bolted into the floor in a crash, since they’re taller, putting the weight (force) further from the attachment point (fulcrum), making these more likely to rattle around the cabin in a crash, hurting people more than conventional seats.
And no, I wouldn’t want to ride on one of these, not for any length of time. I’m squished into the short leg space of standard seats as it is now; why would I want even LESS space??
I like the height of the back – standard seats are uncomfortably short – but the seat & arm rests are dinky.
I have been thinking that traveling by train might be the way to go. If these seats show up on airlines I might just start.
I’m not a professional cowboy or anything, but I know that after being on a quarter horse for any extended period of time can seriously blister your butt. I’m sure thats more due to the movement on the saddle as opposed to the shape, but I would still prefer a seat without a raised crotch on an airplane.
Only if they add that in nice Italian cars like Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Who drives a supercar more than a couple of hours (unless it’s racing in which case they use racing buckets)?
Right under the front of “the saddle”, looks like a vertical small toilet seat…so, do you just push forward and go? When you have to go?
Wow, I actually work in a crash test facility that performs lots of certification testing on aircraft seating. Me and my co worker saw this the other day and agreed, that thing would not pass a horizontal test. I also would think that the saddle seat would play hell with down testing. The FAA approved dummies are made to be sitting down flat, I don’t know if they would even fit in one of those.
Stirrups?
That looks nothing like a saddle, and not even remotely as comfortable.
Why not just take out all seats and have standing room for 1500 people on an A380?
LOL LOL LOL LOL!
Your comment (once I got control of my laughing and my bladder)
is terrifiying prophetic. They will try anything for MORE profit.
We just have to say NO! Loudly and in gigantic numbers.
If I boarded a plane and saw these seats, I’d turn around and walk right back off the plane.
What about the people who have to buy two seats because they can’t fit into one? Is there a special extra wide saddle aisle?
This kind of thing would be perfect for Sacramento -> L.A. flights
Seats aren’t needed if they’d strap us into harnesses attached to large loops. Then they could hang us on hooks, rotate us in, around, & out like clothes at dry cleaners plus do an auto release dumping us on our butt at the plane’s door.
I hate this and I’ll never buy a ticket to fly and sit in a seat like this. It would probably cut my business travel down significantly. And I’m claustrophobic – at least enough that the idea of this gives me chills.
OK, Italian designed, we can understand that, heck they’re a bit “off-the-wall”. Now we all have to think about how many of the general population in Italy actually travel by air, anywhere. My great aunt Lena (she’s 92) came over “on the boat”), in 1936, hasn’t traveled outside of her home town since. Never will you get her or anybody else in our family in an airplane. I have to travel for work on aircraft of all types. My family think I’m nuts. So the message here is the folks outside of Milan who came up with this design probably never stepped on an aircraft. My uncle Mario says: “Bobby, you gotta take-a-the train, if the airplane doesn’t crash dem seats are going to take your manhood away!!”
Looks like a hospital potty seat without the hole. Maybe they should put a hole in it afterall, because it sure looks like nobody’s gonna be have room to get out and go…..
First off, she looks like she is about to slide right out of her chair, and with a few bumps from turbulance that front part could not be comfortable for a woman either, we do have sensitive parts as well.
Secondly, I was laughing so hard at the other posts, I was darn near in tears, which is why I signed up to post. You are a funny group! Absolutely true and hysterical comments!!!!!
OK…I doubt this seat will ruin your crotch. I do ride horses at horse shows and am in the saddle for hours at a time. Now if you really think about it…mens genitals are out in front, so the bump isn’t going to crush anything valuable. Now what I think would be awful is that some people can get a nerve palsy from pressure on the nerves of the legs. I really don’t want to fly like this either…even tho I ride in a saddle for hours at a time, but I’ll be darn if I am flying this way too. Also …. 23″ pitch….no thank you.
Haha, a 8 hour flight with that monster? Hell no! I’m certain that flying in an airplane’s toilet cabin is far more comfortable than flying with that crotch-crusher.
Wow… Will the tray tables lock to the arm rests so they look 100% like baby high chairs? Freakin Gerber could have designed those chairs.
I boycott any airline (even for business, I have some pull)
that has anything other than 1st or Business Class seating
on the plane. They still have to fill seats and if you hit ‘em
right where this contraption does, they will give you a coach
price for a business class seat. All you have to do is make
it look like you’re flying on business as a rep of some company
and be really loud about it. They cave immediately because
they don’t want you whining about them to those that hold the
pursestrings at your organization. Lots of lost business hurts.