Patent filed for diagonal seating rows

A patent for diagonal seating rows has been filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office. For wide-body aircraft, this arrangement allows a possible 12-abrest (3-6-3) configuration in Economy Class. Welcome to the slave ship! In addition, the drawing features triangular lavatories for optimal room usage.
Let’s hope that no carrier will adopt this strange seating configuration!

Abstract
A seating arrangement for a vehicle, especially an aircraft, in which seats are arranged in a plurality of generally parallel ranks, each rank extending in a fore-and-aft direction, and in a plurality of rows, each row extending at an angle other than a right angle with respect to said fore-and-aft direction and wherein adjacent seats in a row overlap in a transverse direction. In the preferred embodiment, the seats of a row also overlap in said fore-and-aft direction and include a truncated armrest at one side of the seat arranged to fit behind an adjacent seat. The seats further include an armrest at the other side of the seat, the armrest comprising a bar which extends from the rear of the seat so that a portion of one seat is located beneath the armrest provided at said other side of an adjacent seat.

Patent for diagonal seat rows in airplanes

Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office

8 thoughts on “Patent filed for diagonal seating rows”

  1. Humm… thanks for this. It could be interesting. I’m not completely opposed to the concept, I’d like to see it first before really giving it a thumbs up or down. There is an extra row of seats but perhaps being slightly ahead of the adjacent seat you gain a sense of privacy as compensation (Think excessively large person sitting next to you). So there may be some gains and losses overall.

  2. I wonder how this will effect getting in and out from your seat? What would be the difference in the swept forwards and backwards seating arrangement for accessibility?

    swept backwards (?)
    |/
    |/
    |/

    swept forwards (?)
    |\
    |\
    |\

  3. Well, let’s see if they will squeeze a 11 or 12-abrest layout into their 777 …

    >Don’t tell me this is the first you have seen of this!?
    DATE: 01/04/08 – I wish it was an April fool 😉

  4. I wonder how this will effect boarding. What different effects will the sweeping forward or backward of the rows have?

    I guess gone are the days that one could sprawling across a few seats on an empty plane. (well a lot of the new seats not as good as the old 80’s & 70’s for doing this any way)

  5. I think this is a nice design. Advantages: a) obese people will not overflow into the seat you use, b) the armrest can be designed to “extend” towards you, so that EVERYONE will have the use of two armrests c) rather than increasing seats in the aircrafts, they can consider increasing the seat pitch!! hehehe Fantastic