Would you stand for it?

When Michael O’Leary suggested, at the start of the summer, that Ryanair might consider introducing ‘standing seats’ on their aircraft, he was not taken seriously. However, a new seat design from an Italian company, which is shaped like a horse’s saddle and named the “SkyRider”, allows just 23 inches of legroom, which is about seven inches less than the average seat’s space of 30 inches. They claim that this would be comfortable enough for a journey of up to 3 hours - though I think it is significant that, in the publicity photo above, they show the passenger in the front row and not the row behind! Imagine how much the capacity of the Boeing 737-800, Ryanair’s standard vehicle, could be increased, and their payload raised, if they could persuade the Irish Aviation Authority to licence the seat.

However the sunk costs of obtaining that licence could be prohibitive. Regulatory requirements say that seats must be capable of withstanding a force of 16 Gs, so the seats must be strong enough - and strongly secured enough - not to topple over like dominos in the event of a crash. Vertical seats would require more reinforcing than standard seats, because the passenger’s centre of gravity is higher. They may need more seat belts, and the whole fleet would have to be expensively refitted. Simon Calder at the Independent pointed out that planes are only licensed to carry so many people—189 in the case of the Boeing 737-800, and that to use these seats the company would need to develop an entirely new craft to use them on—a prohibitively expensive exercise for such a low-cost carrier. Back in July, Ryanair’s spokesman conceded Boeing has not agreed to its plan. “It is still at the discussion stage, yes. There are fairground rides that take people from zero to 4 Gs without the protection of an aircraft fuselage. If they can do that, and Boeing can help people get to the Moon, then it should be able to develop an upright seating design.”

Could be that this is another great example of Ryanair getting free publicity from an outrageous idea – there is plenty of precedent for this. But perhaps you should never dismiss such an idea from a company whose marketing strategy is based on making a very public virtue out of minimising costs…..