The New Airplane Seats From Hell Could Get You Kicked in the Head by Your Neighbors

Impact

Remember how much you hated bunk beds as a kid? Remember how terrible it was to be on the bottom bunk, worrying every second of the night the bed was going to collapse and you would be crushed underneath your sibling or cousin or friend?

Prepare to cry hot tears of fury and disillusionment, because European transportation behemoth Airbus wants to do that — on a plane.

In an application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Oct. 1, Airbus detailed its plans for the latest in-flight abomination.

Let's enhance this bizarre image. What is going on here, exactly?

Mic/United States Patent and Trademark Office

Here's the blasphemy from a different angle:

Airbus/United States Patent and Trademark Office

How Airbus explained it: "In modern means of transport, in particular in aircraft, it is very important from an economic point of view to make optimum use of the available space in a passenger cabin," the application reads. "In order to still more efficiently use the space in a passenger cabin of an aircraft, [this patent] proposes to position an elevated deck structure on a main deck floor in the passenger cabin of a wide-body aircraft for providing a mezzanine seating area in a substantially unused upper lobe of the aircraft fuselage."

In other words, welcome to the world's worst way to get accidentally kicked in the head or spat on or have some poor sap's Coke cascade down your back.

Airbus/United States Patent and Trademark Office

The never-ending quest for economy of space in airplanes is nothing new. In July, for example, a different company filed a patent to make face-to-face seating a reality. In that iteration, passengers would be forced to avoid making awkward eye contact with their seat-mates while simultaneously carefully arranging their hands so they wouldn't lightly brush their companion's. Sign us up!

Mic/World Intellectual Property Organization

The desire on the part of airline companies to get the most bang for their buck is certainly understandable — to a point. Unfortunately for weary travelers everywhere, that point was reached a long time ago, when airlines began charging for blankets and shilling their own shitty products for the entire duration of the flight. 

Airbus' plans to stack passengers on top of each other like Jenga blocks isn't quite as horrifying as the face-to-face travel option, but it's still pretty bad. It also poses some logistical problems: What if travelers aren't able to get up there? What happens when there's turbulence? How will the flight attendants get half-baked airline food to the upper barracks? For the love of God, won't someone think of the children and the havoc they'll wreak?

And to think, things were just looking up.

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h/t The Verge