7 Ingenious Ways to Blunt the Horror of Modern Aviation

The Holy Grail of airplane seats is comfy, breathable, and above all, light. (Airlines are not going to waste precious pounds on unnecessarily cushy digs.) Octaspring, a concept from upholsterer Boxmark, aviation seating company Stelia, and aviation manufacturing heavyweight Airbus, may just cover all the bases. It uses foam springs of varying densities to distribute the weight of your delicate glutes over the seat. Plus, the lightweight cushion retains less heat, meaning your butt gets a well-deserved chance to breathe. The whole thing is a third lighter than all-foam cushions, according to Airbus.

You might not realize it from where you sit, but airplanes are snaked with electric cables. The jet of the future, however, needs much more electricity, which is why Diehl Aerospace’s Power Line Communication concept has those cables doing double and even triple duty. The design loads an aircraft’s existing cables with the ability to also transfer power and data, saving valuable weight (and the painful process of additional cable installation) in the process. The upside for you, dear flyer? More weight for squishy seats, fancy meals, and maybe a few more passengers. Think of them as potential friends.

Great ideas in aviation interiors abound, but entirely too few grapple with the #1 problem for flyers with lengthy gams: legroom. No more, says Airbus. Maybe. A collab with seatmaker Recaro and manufacturer THK, the Smart Cabin Configuration Flex Seat allows flight attendants to easily adjust the space between rows with the pull of a lever and a firm push. Specially designed metal tracks along the floor make the maneuver easy-peasy for the guardians of the skies, who can give passengers more space if the bookings allow. As if you needed another reason to be nice to flight attendants.

The upside for you: Global Eagle Entertainment’s Airtime system lets you browse live television channels, a bunch of movies, games, and music, and digital publications (in case you didn’t pick up a magazine at the airport news stand). Plus, you can run the whole thing on your own device through the company’s high-speed web browsing system. The upside for the airlines: Airtime makes it very, very easy to serve you, the consumer, with pretty, targeted ads.

Anyone who has attempted to use a wheelchair on an airplane can tell you: It is a huge, huge pain. If the super-skinny aisles don’t get you, the itsy-bitsy lavatories definitely will. Hamburg University of Applied Sciences students say, “no more.” Their winning design, which snapped up the “University” category award, is a specially crafted seat that allows wheelchair users to roll right on top of the lavatory toilet. The goal is to make the extra-annoying task of peeing in the air an independent endeavor for those in wheelchairs. Ja!