When it comes to fully flat business class seats and suites with direct aisle access for narrowbody aircraft, airlines’ choices at this point are either inward-facing or outward-facing herringbones, since the layout of staggered seats on the narrowbody fuselage is less optimal than on widebodies.
In single-aisles, there is a greater amount of space between the aisle and the window in each row than there is on widebodies. For narrowbody herringbones, the concept is the same as on a widebody — tesselate passengers at an angle to the centreline — but the implementation is more complicated because of the angle at which the seats need to be positioned to take full space-optimised advantage of the wider aisle-to-window area.
The resulting problem arises when a tighter seat pitch becomes desirable — and it is indeed a rare case in which it does not — because of the inherent need to squeeze past the forward side of the seat. Regulators require specific minimum distances between the furthest forward point of the seat cushion in its taxi, takeoff and landing (TTOL) position and the wall in front here.
(As an aside, those minimum distances are in real life terms not particularly reflective of a reasonable proportion of actual body types in the global population. A portly or even pleasantly plump passenger may not find ingress and egress to be particularly easy even outside the emergency scenarios that regulators are primarily considering here.)
In order to achieve these minimum distances while still being able to offer pitches in low thirties in inches terms, the answer has been to essentially slice off the forward corner of the outward-facing herringbone seat — a kind of “magic triangle — creating a five-sided shape that essentially removes seated support for the front half of the passenger’s leg.
The beveled “magic triangle” cutout is featured on Safran’s Vue in particular. Image: John Walton
This lack of support underneath the thigh, as anyone who has flown a slimline economy seat with a shallow seat pan will know, is not especially comfortable for long periods of time.
Images of tightly pitched herringbones may make some readers think of the Aviointeriors Skyrider economy class saddle seat. Indeed, based on those images, Skyrider actually provided more thigh support than some of these herringbones, or half of the herringbones at any case.
While the ottoman that creates the lower part of the bed is shaped to fit into the cutout, this is only helpful in sleeping mode, and while sleep will be important on single-aisle operations, so will seated comfort on the day flights that almost invariably precede the overnights.
From overhead, the way the egress needs to work is clearly visible. Image: flydubai
At trade shows, where visitors to booths sit down for a matter of minutes or even seconds, a plushly cushioned seat pan can do a lot when it comes to suggesting comfort. But there is quite literally no precedent where having half a seat whose pan on one side is half the depth of the pan on the other side, especially for long seated periods.
Stelia – Opera NB reveal at AIX 2024.
Regardless of seatmaker testing, the proof is when these seats hit the airplane. Will the “magic triangle” cutout be noticeable? Will the inflight entertainment, connectivity, food and beverage create distraction? The way this all pans out — if you’ll pardon the pun — when these seats are installed and carrying passengers will be informative to watch.
It’s notable that PR images often neatly hide away the “magic triangle”. Image: Safran
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Featured image credited to flydubai
