A brand new flight class, the standing class, may come out soon. An private jetliner in China has subimitted a petion to the authority, requesting the permission to offer standing class sevices.

“People can stand inside transit buses for hours, why can’t airline do the same?” Says president of the jetliner. By doing so, the capacity of an airplane can increase as much as 40%, and ticket prices will drop signifacantly. He further explained.

This sounds like good idea in the bad economic condition. I am sure some traverlers are willing to try the service when it becomes available. However, this could create a number of potential problems.

standing-class

First, if tickets for coach class are not sold, which is quite often to happen in most of flights, will flight attendants allow the standing passengers to sit down? In theory, they shouldn’t, just like passengers seated in coach can’t be moved to the first class cabin no matter how many seats are empty there. But try to image this, there are many unoccupied seats in a cabin while a crowd of people standing next to them, that seems little bit too funny.  

Okay, let’s assume the standing passenger can take the empty seat, then who is going to decide who can sit and who have to keep standing?  In China, fighting for seats in buses and in train is not unusual. Should they really extend such a scenario up into the air? 

Even if the spare seats are reasonably assigned to some of the standing passengers, how will those holding sitting tickets be convinced that they have been treated fairly?

Anyway, it’s going to be  difficult for crew members handle the situation.

Second, it’s going be uncomfortable and unsafe for passengers to stand in flight for an extended period time. It is a common sense that all passengers must put seat belts on when a plane cruises in turbulence. How to buckle up those who are standing straight?

The idea is creative yet stupid. Some believe this would convert a Boeing 737 to a Boeing 767 without costing anything. Really? Is it at the cost of giving up passenger’s safty protection?