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A nice fantasy of mine is to start a new international airline focused on north America and maybe Jordan, Egypt, Malta and perhaps some European like Prague, Florence, Barcelona.
Maybe run a sparse or seasonally adjusted schedule.
I'd use Airbus 350. Whereas economy is typically 9 abreast and capable of 10, I'd want just 7 abreast and 21 or 21.5 inch wide seats like Virgin's exceptional Premium Economy. The whole plane like that. No attempt to do lie flats and compete with other airlines Business or First class products. Seat pitch would be 33-34, with an option for extra legroom rows, say 38-39, otherwise the same wide, deeply padded seat and service.
I might consider sleep pods, stacked, like a Tokyo pod hotel, where you spend the whole flight horizontal or sat-up-in-bed to eat. I don't know. I wonder if that would even get certification.
But yes, fundamentally one class - Awesome Class. Awesome seats, Awesome food, Awesome fun.
Its most probably bollox, commercially speaking. Almost all Business Class only experiments have folded. I guess such a Premium Economy concept as mine would fail too. But its a nice thought !
Apart from the seating, I have some nice ideas to make airplane journeys go better. How about gym steppers and vibro-pad based devices, to get your body and circulation moving ? Just a small number of them, behind thin partitions. Rationed by time and time between usage, by zapping your boarding card. Perhaps also an advanced, powerful massage chair. I am inspired by these ideas, by Virgin's "wonder wall" concept. I would also like to employ mood lighting, as we have seen possible already on latest gen aircraft. Imagination could run riot on the crew uniforms - maybe with a nod to Sylvia Anderson's designs ! Or run different themes across the fleet. EVA do bizarre Hello Kitty themed aircraft, including food and crew uniforms and including the executive cabins ( !!! ) Their sales actually went up.
New York, LA, Las Vegas, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, Orlando, Toronto, Vancouver. Malta, Luxor, Amman, Prague, Florence, Barcelona.
Awesome Air !
" Run by cats ! " |
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