"Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none has agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal." Link to article by Christopher Elliott in the NYT. (Thanks, Peter Graham)
Reader comment: Christopher Bowns
says,
Airbus has denied the plans, see also this CNN story. The Wikipedia entry has it at the top of the Design section: "The A380-800 can carry 555 passengers in a three-class configuration or up to 853 passengers in a single-class economy configuration."
Reader comment: Jörg Cassens says,
The "experts who have seen a proposal" might have seen this: jpeg link.
As far as I know, this is scanned from an internal magazine for Airbus
employees from 2003. It features a picture of standing-row "seats". But
this is not something Airbus was actually trying to sell at that time,
but a mock-up designed by some younger Airbus executives participating
in a kind of creativity-boosting workshop.Although they say the results of the workshop are to be further
investigated, I think the caption of the picture says what Airbus
thinks: "The 'passengers' take their seats (hopefully not for a
long-haul flight.)"
