Over the Pacific Ocean Excerpted From Wall Street Journal
Cuddling or Sleeping?
Steve Metz of Houston cuddled up with his wife Jackie and slept as they flew to New Zealand on a small futon. This flying couch wasn’t in a private jet or even a high-priced business-class cabin. They snuggled in coach.
Innovation has been virtually non-existent in the coach cabin for decades. Now Air New Zealand has produced something new: A way for coach passengers to lie flat, via a new-fangled futon allowing sleeping on long-distance flights.. Scott McCartney has details on Lunch Break.
“I don’t sleep well on planes, but I actually slept a good five hours,” said Mr. Metz, aboard a 13-hour Air New Zealand flight from Los Angeles to Auckland recently. “It’s no king-sized bed, but we made do.”
“Cuddle class” is an innovative seat design that has given coach passengers the first real opportunity to lie flat for sleep on long flights. To create the extra space, three seats in a row have fold-away armrests and a padded foot-rest panel that flips up and locks into place. Two passengers take up three seats and pay an average of half the cost of the third seat, typically an extra $500 to $800 for an overnight flight.
The sky couch has limitations. To make it fit, Air New Zealand narrowed the aisles in the coach cabin. And since the couch is only about 4½-feet long, most people have to scrunch up to keep their feet from hanging into the aisle. In the middle of the night on a recent flight, it was impossible to walk through the coach cabin without bumping feet and legs of sleeping passengers’ hanging out of sky couches. And since it’s still the cheap-ticket cabin, two people have to cuddle closely in only 32 to 33 inches of width for each row, including the seat.
“It was OK, but not necessarily everything I was looking for,” said Bryan Anderson of Denver, who decided to upgrade to sky couch for his honeymoon flight with his bride Carla.
He found the space tighter than anticipated and struggled with what to do with his feet and how to find a comfortable position for two people. “It is a sky couch and not a sky bed. It was a lot like sleeping on the couch at home,” Mr. Anderson said.
Air New Zealand doesn’t want to make the couch longer or wider—if it were better, it might start cannibalizing passengers from business-class or premium-economy seats.
Air New ZealandLegrests open to make a flying futon, but space is still tight.
Read More about Cuddle Class flying from the Wall Street Journal.
Sleeping with Sleepsonic
Want to help with sleeping on an airplane flight? Take along a Sleepsonic Mini Pillow and some of your favorite relaxation music on your iPod or other M# player.
Categories: 
Recent Comments