If you’ve flown economy in a modern airliner, you’re acutely aware of how small plane seats are. You get a sliver of space on a seat that’s built primarily to be lightweight and safe, not comfortable. But what if it could be both? One engineer thinks he has the solution. This is the Chaise Longue, and it seeks to give space back by stacking economy class passengers on top of each other in a single-deck airliner. After taking criticism from the public and the media, the creator of the Chaise Longue fixed some issues. Now the final boss of crazy ideas to fix airline travel is back, and it’s still seriously being pitched to airlines.
If the Chaise Longue – not “Lounge,” as you might expect – seems familiar to you, it’s because I wrote about it last year. The seat’s inventor, Alejandro Núñez Vicente, has been touting the double-decker airliner seat since he pitched it as a college project in 2021. In 2022, he built a prototype and then started marketing it as a serious deal. The Internet didn’t really respond kindly to Núñez Vicente’s seat. There were plenty of jokes about human tailpipe emissions wafting down from the upper seats, and other jokes about airlines treating passengers like cargo.
But there were legitimate concerns about the seat, too. I pointed out that a challenge of the Chaise Longue was permitting the safe evacuation of an aircraft in 90 seconds. Others said that the lower seats appear to be poor places for people with claustrophobia, while the seat design in general seems to ignore the existence of people with limited mobility.
Well, Núñez Vicente says he’s fixed this and more with the latest version of the Chaise Longue. He’s hoping that, one day, you’ll ride in one of these things in an Airbus A350 or a Boeing 777X.
One Man’s Solution To Tiny Seats
An unfortunate reality of air travel today is that the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t really regulate comfort. Airline passenger advocate groups have been fighting for bigger seats in economy class for years, and their demands have been largely ignored. Even when the FAA asks for comments about seat size, it’s purely on the basis of safety, not comfort. A park bench would be fine in the FAA’s eyes so long as it meets safety standards.
Some inventors have offered their own solutions. If aviation authorities aren’t going to demand that seats get bigger, maybe someone can design a seat that gives passengers more room while pleasing airlines. That’s where the Chaise Longue comes in. If this is your first time seeing the Chaise Longue, I’ll bring you up to speed, because it’s technically been around for a while. Here’s what I wrote in my previous report:
In 2021, Alejandro was a 21-year-old student attending TU Delft University in the Netherlands. At the time, the seats were called the Chaise Longue Economy Seat Project and it made the shortlist for Judges’ Choice for that year’s Crystal Cabin Awards. According to CNN, Alejandro used to travel around the world and one thing stuck out as being particularly painful. He hated how the seats of today lacked legroom. He figured that if only the seats in front of them were higher up, he could actually spread his legs out. So that’s what he did. Alejandro drew up the Chaise Longue, a double-decker airline seat design made for any medium to large aircraft.
Here’s how the Chaise Longue works. An aircraft being outfitted with Chaise Longue seating would delete all overhead bins near the seats. Doing so will allow Chaise Longues to fit. Then, passengers will have to choose seats based on what they’re looking for. If they want maximum recline, they’ll have to climb up into the upper rows. If they want to relax and stretch their legs out with maximum legroom, you choose the lower seats. Both levels have better recline than planes have now, but those on the upper level have the greatest recline of the two choices.
In terms of baggage, your personal items should fit in the included storage, but you’ll have to check your carry-on. Alejandro also pitched the idea as being pandemic-safe, as he believed placing people at different levels would be “more suitable for flights in pandemic times.”
While Núñez Vicente has presented the Chaise Longue as a way to increase space on a per-passenger basis, he added a sweetener for the airlines. In his eyes, if an airline commits to Chaise Longues, they’d be able to fit more passengers in a plane, and thus generate a greater profit.
Take Two
Unfortunately for Núñez Vicente, while the Chaise Longue went viral, it didn’t really land with the public. CNN Travel wrote about the original Chaise Longue prototype in 2022 and then the updated version in 2023. In both instances, the publication’s tester and other travelers expressed concerns about claustrophobia. Much of the Internet, including our own comments, chastised the Chaise Longue as an attempt to cram even more people into a plane, therefore making travel worse, not better.
The 2023 version had replaced the old version’s ladders with stairs to reach the upper level. It also had a dedicated place for lower-level passengers to place their personal items. Like the original iteration, every passenger sitting in the updated Chaise Longue would have to check their carry-on, as overhead bin space would be deleted entirely.
In 2025, the Chaise Longue appeared in the news again because, amazingly, the project got interest from Airbus. That didn’t solve any of the complaints, however. You might have noticed that the lower seat passenger’s head is about level with the butt of the upper seat passenger. This caused endless jokes about passengers passing gas. Speaking to USA Today, Núñez Vicente didn’t totally dismiss that possibility:
“The idea is that there will be some kind of restraint here,” he said, pointing to the partition behind the upper level of seats. If a passenger passed gas “it wouldn’t go straight through,” unless it were especially forceful.
My biggest concern with the Chaise Longue is safety. As I said earlier, the FAA is adamant that an aircraft has to be evacuated within 90 seconds in an emergency. In theory, the Chaise Longue adds more people to the equation, and then forces those people to either crawl out of a hobbit hole or jump down from an upper level. Airliners have to carry enough cabin crew for the number of passengers onboard. The aircraft also needs facilities, exit doors, and food stores to support the number of passengers onboard.
If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the FAA has regulations to prevent head injuries in case of emergency aircraft maneuvers and other intense situations. Likewise, aircraft seats have to be able to withstand 16g of forward acceleration. All of these regulations are publicly available, and there’s even some math in these rules:
Núñez Vicente has yet to prove that his seat design will be anything resembling compliant with regulations. I also wonder how these seats would work during a fire emergency. Will passengers be able to escape the upper row during a fire that’s producing heavy smoke?
The Final Boss Of Double-Decker Seating
Yet, there’s a new version of the Chaise Longue for 2026 that Núñez Vicente is calling the “ultimate, final statement” of his idea. This Chaise Longue went on display at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month.
The biggest change with the new version of the Chaise Longue is that the lower-level seats now have a pretty decent gap between the seat and the upper level in front of them. Indeed, this version appears to eliminate many of the claustrophobia concerns. The new seat design also puts some distance between you and the butt of the person in front of you.
Núñez Vicente says that the seat pitch – the distance between the seats – is far enough apart that a lower-level passenger can actually stand up and do stretches in their row. The new Chaise Longue also has larger side panels for greater privacy and a reduced chance of someone in the upper row dropping something on someone in the lower row. The new version also eliminates the possibility of passengers propping their feet up on the walls.
The stairs that lead to the second level have also been widened. Upstairs, the seats have 12 inches of recline, or about twice the recline of the average premium economy seat. Downstairs, there’s technically enough room for the middle seat to recline flat.
Núñez Vicente also says he added a wheelchair-accessible front row to the Chaise Longue. However, this feature is not new. He was advertising this feature last year, and one of the images is embedded in this post. For everyone else, the bottom row is more accessible than previous versions, which is great. But the seats still aren’t compliant for people with disabilities.
Núñez Vicente doesn’t really address regulations, either. There’s no explanation about how aircraft evacuation would work, or how the seats would hold up to impact forces. Weirdly, he’s also had to move the goalpost. When Núñez Vicente launched this endeavor, it was supposed to revolutionize economy class. However, in adding more space to the Chaise Longue, it’s not really compatible with economy class anymore. Now, he’s hoping for the Chaise Longue to be a revolution of premium economy. From CNN:
“But we have been moving the concept towards more of a premium economy experience,” says Núñez Vicente. “We have met directly with airlines and airline executives, CEOs and their customer experience departments, and they told us exactly what they wanted — and they wanted this seat to be something more than just economy.”
[…]
“In this day and age, with this industry and airlines, they are not going to give passengers in the economy more space — it’s going to lean more towards premium economy, and that’s what we have seen,” says Núñez Vicente.
The new version of the Chaise Longue has been subjected to testing by 150 passengers. According to Simply Flying, the results of the test were that passengers thought the lower row was the best, and that both rows were better than premium economy. Reportedly, those same testers thought the lower row was comparable to business class, and that 90 percent of the participants would pay twice as much as an economy ticket to ride in the lower Chaise Longue. Of course, 150 people are a small sample size.
Núñez Vicente hopes that if the Chaise Longue is successful in premium economy, maybe he could do the economy seat version again at a different date. The only problem is that, while he might have chatted with airlines and even got some interest from Airbus, no airline, supplier, or airframer has committed to even buying the Chaise Longue. The seat still has to be certified, and even if it were market-ready, it would not be a cheap expenditure to gut an aircraft’s seats and overhead bins to plop Chaise Longues down in them. Airlines are infamously cheap businesses, after all.
Would You Like A Double-Decker Seat?
Regardless, Núñez Vicente is determined. He plans on scoring partners so he can turn this version of the Chaise Longue design into a pre-production prototype that will be made out of materials that can fly. His hope is to display the prototype version at next year’s Aircraft Interiors Expo. As far as the seat itself, I’m not going to be convinced until it’s certified for flight and some airlines start caring about it. Even then, I still don’t like the thought of passengers climbing up and down their seats. That seems to expose too much risk for falling injuries and crowding during emergencies. That assumes it ever goes into production, and at this stage, I doubt it will.
Credit where credit is due, I’m impressed that Núñez Vicente continues to develop the Chaise Longue. This is now the fourth iteration that has been shown to the public, and no matter how much the Internet mocks the thing, he isn’t giving up on it. Honestly, it’s almost inspirational, in a way. This is a man who isn’t letting the haters get him down. So, bravo to that.
Top graphic image: Chaise Longue
Doing Nothing Boards Planes Faster Than Airlines
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo
These are all well developed concepts but are still not very good concepts at all. Particularly passenger experience is suffering greatly here along with ease of movement, and weight of it all far exceeds current setups which is an important point in an industry that are willing to remove pages from in-flight magazines because they are too heavy. Like hydrogen powered cars, these seats are a no-go driven by financial greed than anything else
Normally, I wouldn’t tell someone to quit…but when it’s this stupid…
this dude just needs to GIVE UP on this stupid shit! Nobody wants it.
Also, if those are touchscreens they look a little too far away to use
Both levels seem like a real pain to clean, the lower level especially so. I can’t imagine cleaning that in any financially acceptable turnaround time. It is going to get really nasty really quick in that leg space.
When do they clean? United gives you a wet wipe so you can clean your seat yourself. Maybe it’s different in first/business.
Can we just go full horizontal? Shove me in a torpedo tube, idgaf, I just want to take a nap
I appreciate the creativity, but asking everyone to check their carry-ons is a non-starter.
One benefit I see to this is that it gets rid of the overhead bin and thus, no more ‘hogging overhead bin space’ game some asshole passengers play.
You would store your stuff under your see or under the seat in front of you… IF you’re on the lower level.
Upper level passengers are a different story. It looks like they have less space for carry on bags or even stretching out.
In this setup, I would pay more for a lower level seat and less for an upper level one.
Biggest problem I see with this is the lack of carry on bags. When I traveled regularly for work, it was against company policy to store our laptops in a checked bag. I’m not sure if other corporations have similar policies, but if they do then that basically eliminates corporate travel on these, making them a non-starter.
Laptop bags / purses / pillows / teddy bears count as your one personal item in addition to your carry on with the expectation it goes under the seat in front of you for take off / landing. Seems like the top row passengers get screwed by this but the bottom row bastards win doubly as they can now slide it under their ottoman.
Did you say Chaise Longue?
Wet Leg performing Chaise Longue at Coachella weekend 2 – April 19, 2026
Not to be too cynical, but I see much room for them to push them closer down on folks. I also see a lot of trouble for people with limited mobility and people for me who are 6’4″. My knees are starting to touch on American flights. To request a different seat on a Ryanair flight in Europe a few years ago because I was wedged in in the seat when I sat down on my flight – My knees were literally wedged between the seat in front of me and my back against the seat seated down.
It’s all such a ruse to me. They’ve turned them into Greyhound buses in the sky from non regulated pricing and now they want to pack us in like sardines instead of just charging higher prices.
And then we get the lovely pleasure of bailing them out because they’ve done all this nonsense.
#spiritair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_flatus_expulsion
I’m just here to ask “can coach get any worse?!” I’m game to try this!
doesnt there need to be some kind of permit or license to do crop dusting on such a commercial scale like this?
So no windows for the upper level seats?
Those are huge points of failures in aircraft, I’m not opposed to getting rid of them and replacing them with LED screens.
The advantage of that is you can have fun messing with the passengers by selectively inserting a creature out on the wing, then gaslighting them when they freak out.
The exit rows will be a problem. It will require a larger gap between rows than what the design shows, similar to current exit rows having more legroom. The upstairs row in front of the exit won’t be able to recline because they would block emergency egress, so there goes the only advantage of the upper seat. The exit row seats wouldn’t be able to lay flat either, because they would potentially block the aisle, and the extra legroom required for the exits would leave a large gap between the seat bottom and the cushion under the seat in front of it.
The fact that people wouldn’t be allowed a carry-on bag in the upper level would be a non-starter as well. And it looks like there isn’t even a space to stow a personal item like a purse or a small bag with stuff to entertain a kid. You would be stuck with whatever fits in your pockets.
Just knock the passengers out with thorazine and pile them in the plane
Stack ’em like firewood!
Only problem the airlines have with that is their liability once the passenger walks out of the airport at their destination and is navigating an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar Mitsubishi Outlander Sport Or Similar and the SkySnooz hasn’t all worn off.
The Fifth Element
Put them all on pallets and load them on a plane with a forklift.
Besides the obvious lack of design for purpose, elimination of the overhead bins alone means more hazardous lithium ion batteries in the cargo hold especially if there’s no room for luggage in the cabin. Let alone all the ingress and egress issues; structural weight, restrictive to cargo volumes which is the real money maker more than even business or first class fares etc. So while it gets headlines and people flapping their jaws about it it more than likely will not ever fly commercially.
They’ll bring back bomb bay doors to jettison the cargo.
That will not work, lithium fires are too quick and feeding it more oxygen would only speed up the reaction.
But burning luggage falling from 40K feet would look awesome!
Along with the rest of the fuselage and human remains. There’s a higher probability of it remaining undetectable until it’s too late, and even if it was detected the last thing most airline crews want to do is decompress the cabin and seal the fate of everyone on board. Time for those life insurance vending machines to make a comeback.
There’s nothing reasonable about it. Stop manufacturing outrage to generate engagement. I thought The Autopian was better than that. Yes, I’m aware I’m part of the problem.
But I rather enjoy the outrage. Gets the blood pumping.
I just want the little cubicle/drawer things like they had on The Fifth Element. Load me in, knock me out, and wake me when we’re there. Easy peasy.
I don’t even care if I’m knocked out. Just being able to lie down for the entire flight would be good, although admittedly I’m also not someone who gets claustrophobic in MRI machines. YMMV on whether being shoved in a tube is more or less comfortable.
I fall asleep in MRI machines. Put me in a tray to lay down, maybe some VR goggles to watch a movie or something? I’m good.
Of course in the event of an emergency no one can get out and we’ll all be barbecued like hotdogs.
Clearly the answer is to make each tray an ejection pod. WCPGW? 😉
Given the obesity rates in the USA, it’ll be more like barbecued pork roast than sausage.
More like mechanically separated meat products.
I don’t know, some of my shirts make me look like a sausage.
Obviously you’re not fat enough.
LOL, thanks. Actually, I’ve lost about 25 lbs over the last 6 months. Working hard on the exercise.
I came here to post this! Bwahaha
dude, SAME. I think of that exact scene everytime I’m forced to travel via airliner, it’d be so much more comfortable!
I can’t help hanging conspiracy lines on a wallboard with tacks about this.
Make air travel more inconvenient and crowded, thus making people buy large, roomy SUVs to travel in.
Nope nope nope. Hell no. Claustrophobic as hell. No carry ons is a non starter. Nope
This
Is gonna make it an absolute no-go from a consumer standpoint, given pretty much every airline charges for checked bags now.
This line stood out to me as well, but I was of a completely different opinion. One thing I find very annoying about flying is people attempting to cram giant suitcases into the overhead bins. Airlines charge to check bags right now because people have an alternative that sorta works (i.e. the bins). Eliminating that option might eliminate an airline’s excuse to charge those fees.
My pessimism says once they’ve introduced a fee, they’ll never remove it. Plus I disagree that the suitcases are “giant”. The allowed size for roller bags keeps getting smaller, and in my experience, it is verified. So anyone with something oversized does get forced to gate-check.
I agree they will probably never remove the fee, but I can live with that. People will either adapt or pay the fee. I doubt anyone truly saves money with the system we have now – it just allows airlines to advertise artificially low fares while in practice charging 10-20% more.
I can only speak from my experience, but I regularly see bags that are clearly oversized allowed on airplanes. Even if they are checking, though, the size limit for carry on bags is far too large. Planes do not have enough bin capacity for what is allowed. All of this adds time on the ground, either in the form of forcing the last 40 people in line to gate check their bags or wasting time searching for available bin space once you are on the plane. I have been on a few flights that were delayed due to passengers insisting on carrying their carry on onto the plane, even when there was clearly not enough room.
Also, while evacuations are rare, carry on baggage adds considerable time. The rule may be that you must leave your baggage on the plane, but videos from every evacuation shows people ignore this rule.
Overall, it would simplify flying considerably if carryon bags were limited to small personal items only.
Don’t most airlines charge for carry ons too at this point?
No, not in my experience. Some do, but it’s much more of a toss-up.
Some do, but most now charge extra for everything else. This summer I booked 2 tickets to fly and if I wanted to pick my seat, and bring one checked bag for each person it would have added 50% to the cost. If I wanted 2 inches more leg room, double the cost. If I want to lay down in the 10 hour flight, 5 times the cost.
Air lines are at a race to the bottom of service, or they are abandoning any customer with is not willing to spend 5 times what they get for economy seats.
Mostly the super cheap ones like Spirit. Carry-ons are still free on the majors.
You really need to throw finger quotes around “free”, there.
United vs. Frontier – yes, United includes a carryon with your ticket price, but your ticket price is commensurately higher (typically) than with Frontier.
I’m super-sad that Southwest’s leadership decided to abandon the “we’re different – ‘better’ different” mentality and leap into the race to the bottom (cost and experience) with everybody else – I flew SW because they UNDERSTOOD that passengers travel with luggage and that wasn’t some crazy outlier behavior.
I just booked tickets on Frontier last night – upcharge for carry-on; upcharge for checked luggage; upcharge for seat selection; upcharge based on the seat you pick; 3 different interstitials asking if you wanted to upgrade to better seats, more luggage, salted pretzels… Frustrating as all hell.
You can pay less on United if you go Basic Economy where they don’t allow a carry-on. This means they are charging for a carry-on in Economy because it’s the only difference.
Yeah, they do. They hide it by calling it “Economy” where you’re allowed a carry-on, but you can pay less by choosing “Basic Economy” where you aren’t allowed a carry-on. So yeah, they’re charging for carry-ons, even if some haven’t noticed it yet.
I think the baggage problem is bigger than the seating problem. From a loading and offloading standpoint, dwell time, etc. If airlines can make that part more efficient, and have an actual physical limited space for each passenger (not a shared overhead bid that people fight over) there could some progress. I wouldn’t be against checked bags if I could just pick up the bag right after I deplaned, instead of schleping to a carousel far away.
I have to think this is still DOA in the US market at least because of the 90 second rule. Having dozens or possibly hundreds of people trying to climb down on top of people already rushing for the doors probably won’t fly (har har) with the FAA. If you fit enough extra passengers into an existing design I would also question if there are still enough exits for people to evacuate in time. If the FAA says the seats are fine but the planes need another pair of doors, then the cost of having the manufacturer redesign the plane to have those doors will probably cost more than anyone is willing to pay. Not to mention that retrofitting planes already in service to have extra doors might not even be possible.
And remember they’re all fat, old, and not in good physical shape.
Can’t do anything about getting old. But staying/getting in shape is a choice.
I’m guessing the upper level passengers would have their head even closer to the ceiling?
Changes will only come to the elite class.
“Thank you for flying Pink Eye Air!”
A subsidiary of Covid Airlines!
Beer farts in the face!!