By Michael Klesius - AirSpaceMag.com
So we asked a manufacturer. Sandy Angers of Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ public relations office replied by email: “We are not familiar with any study or survey pertaining to passenger preference of aft-facing vs. forward-facing seats. Airlines traditionally conduct their own market research and may have that data.” As for which is safer, “Boeing does not have a position on whether aft-facing seats offer greater or less safety. All seats must meet regulatory safety standards.”
We weren’t able to find surveys of passenger preference for airplane seating, either. But Alison Trinkoff, a former doctoral student at Johns Hopkins and now a nurse at the University of Maryland, wrote a paper in the American Journal of Public Health in 1985 about preferences on the Washington, D.C., Metro subway system, which offers both forward- and aft-facing seats in every train car. She found that only 25 percent of adults chose aft-facing seats, while 66 percent of children chose them. Trinkoff concluded, “While many adults may prefer to ride facing forward, others might opt to face rearward if safety advantages were known and appropriate seating was made available.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, British Airways (then British European Airways) flew Tridents with half the seats facing backward, and the airline still has some aft-facing seats in business class. Two years ago, a U.K.-based company called the Premium Aircraft Interiors Group began promoting a design called the Freedom Seat for commercial wide bodies, in which every other seat in each row faces aft. The Freedom Seat is more about comfort and economy than safety, however—the shoulders of passengers in adjacent seats can intrude slightly into the space above the legs of passengers to their left and right if they face the opposite way. The configuration translates to an additional column of seats down the length of the economy class cabin of a wide body, and four inches added to the pitch, or the front-to-back spacing between seats. That means 21 more seats in the economy cabin of a Boeing 777 and 50 more in an Airbus A380. “Nobody’s taken us up on it yet,” says business development director Ben Bettell. “I think the main reason is the eye-to-eye contact.” British Airways has solved that problem in their business class cabin with dividers for privacy.
Bettell says that because airplane seats have been facing the same direction for 50 years, airlines may find it hard to adopt radically new seating ideas. He’s hopeful that this will change, and says that one U.S. airline, whom he declines to name, is interested in the company’s aft-facing seats.
As for whether passengers sitting in those seats would be safer, Bettell declines to comment, promising only that the seats will be manufactured to all necessary safety standards.
The U.K.-based Premium Aircraft Interiors Group offers rear-facing seats strictly for economic reasons, and makes no claims about safety.
Katherine Cooper of Xenia, Ohio wonders why the seats in military aircraft face the back of the plane. “It is my understanding that seats are placed in this position for safety,” she writes. “I was under the impression this would protect passengers in case of an aircraft emergency like a sudden deceleration on the ground. Is this so? And if so, why is it that commercial airlines continue to put the seats facing forward?”
People have been debating for at least half a century which way airplane seats should face—forward or backward. According to an article in the December 1952 edition of Naval Aviation News, “Passengers in Navy transport planes have ten-fold better chances of coming out of crashes alive, thanks to backward-facing seats which are being installed in all new planes….The Navy has decided to install the seats after five years of development and testing showed they gave passengers much more protection for the entire back, neck, head and parts of the arms and legs in sudden stoppages. The human body can absorb more shock by the back than by the chest and abdomen, flight surgeons say.” The unsigned article cites two Royal Air Force accidents involving a four-engine Hastings and a two-engine Valetta. Both had rear-facing seats that were credited with minimizing injuries to passengers.
Aft-facing seats were used in Britain and the U.S. as early as 1945, according to the article, but “it took time to prove their advantages justifying the added cost of converting the seats….Navy passengers seem to like the rearward-facing seats. BUAER [the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics] distributed questionnaires to passengers during first months of experimentation with them. More than 500 were questioned after a flight, with only a few voting against them and none advancing a convincing reason for their opinions.”
Not long afterward, Britain’s Flight magazine ran an editorial in its July 16, 1954, issue praising a talk by one G./C. A.C. Dudgeon, D.F.C., of Britain’s Transport Command. “It was an informative, persuasive and entertaining talk, and it put the advantages of the aft-facing seat into very clear perspective—no wild claims, no concentration on one aspect of survival to the exclusion of all others. Subsequently a very lively discussion developed and someone called for a show of hands. I was surprised to see that four-fifths of a reasonably well-informed audience (consisting of members and guests of Aviation Forum) were in favour of the rearward-facing seat for all civil transport aircraft.”
Dudgeon was an early crusader for aft-facing seats, citing research dating back to 1942. The Flight editorial dismissed as “fatuous” the airlines’ worry that passengers would view aft-facing seats as an admission that accidents were possible. “One might carry this argument further,” wrote Flight’s editors, “and advocate the abolition of lifejackets and instructions on how to wear them.”
The same magazine revisited the subject in 1964 with another editorial, “Rearward-facing Seats NOW?,” that provided more technical detail. The center of gravity of a decelerating person is six to nine inches higher when facing aft than when facing forward due to the placement of the seatbelt, according to the article. Because the force of impact would be applied higher on the seat, airlines would have to strengthen the seat’s attachment to the floor. This, the editorial acknowledged, would add weight, and would translate to fewer passengers or the need to carry more fuel. “At present, with airlines losing money almost everywhere, it is only too easy to understand their antipathy for this subject,” say the editors. Yet they also cite a 1958 accident involving an airliner in Munich, Germany, which crashed on takeoff with the Manchester United soccer team on board. Those in forward-facing seats were killed, and those in aft-facing seats were saved.
In 1983, Richard Snyder, a research scientist studying crash protection and transportation safety at the University of Michigan, published a paper titled “Impact Protection in Air Transport Passenger Seat Design.” Snyder wrote, “Data appear to overwhelmingly substantiate that the seated occupant can tolerate much higher crash forces when oriented in the rearward-facing position.” He concluded that aft-facing seats were safer, and still holds to that view today. Now retired from teaching, he replied by email from his home in Arizona, “The basis for providing aft-facing seating impact crash protection is substantial and supported by over half a century of experience.”
Despite the research, we all face forward. Car companies, including super-safety-conscious Volvo, aren’t planning to turn passenger seats around anytime soon, and newborns are the only ones who face aft in automobiles. Most train and bus seats face forward. Airplanes just follow conventional practice.
That didn’t stop Bern Case from campaigning to change the standard. In the summer of 1987, Case was working at the Tri-City International Airport in Saginaw, Michigan (today he’s the airport manager for the Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport in Oregon) when Northwest Flight 255 had a disastrous accident on its next stop after Saginaw. The MD-82 had barely taken off from Detroit when it stalled and crashed into the embankment of a freeway overpass, killing 155 passengers and crew members. Only four-year-old Cecilia Cichan survived.
As Case learned the details of the tragedy, he became convinced that rear-facing seats would have saved lives. Throughout the 1990s, he contacted agencies, companies, and airlines, pushing the idea of rear-facing seats. By the end of the decade, he’d given up. “These numerous studies are just ta-ta’d away with clichés,” he says today. “Airlines say passengers wouldn’t like to face backward. But military airplanes and corporate jets have them.” And, he adds, their passengers report no problems. When former president Bill Clinton came to Oregon during the 2008 presidential campaign, Case was invited to board his charter plane, and noted that Clinton had chosen a rear-facing seat.
“Another objection you hear is cost,” says Case. He thinks it’s a non-issue. “The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration ] doesn’t need to say, ‘Change your planes overnight.’ ”
In fact, the FAA doesn’t seem concerned about the matter one way or the other. “Basically, we set standards and the airlines decide how they want their airplanes built,” says Alison Duquette of the agency’s public affairs office. There might be some concern about passengers evacuating an airplane with rear-facing seats, she adds, although “There has been no definitive research on the subject that we’re aware of. [It’s] just a factor that has to be considered.”
According to David Castelveter of the Washington, D.C.-based Air Transport Association, “There is no difference in the safety of commercial airliner seats—only differences in their weights. There can be a lot of back-and-forth on passenger preferences and reasons for them. Nonetheless, most [passengers] would give the nod to forward-facing.” But the association could not produce any surveys or studies supporting this contention, and does not have a policy on the safety of aft-facing seats. Nor does the Flight Safety Foundation, based in Alexandria, Virginia.
Katherine Cooper of Xenia, Ohio wonders why the seats in military aircraft face the back of the plane. “It is my understanding that seats are placed in this position for safety,” she writes. “I was under the impression this would protect passengers in case of an aircraft emergency like a sudden deceleration on the ground. Is this so? And if so, why is it that commercial airlines continue to put the seats facing forward?”
People have been debating for at least half a century which way airplane seats should face—forward or backward. According to an article in the December 1952 edition of Naval Aviation News, “Passengers in Navy transport planes have ten-fold better chances of coming out of crashes alive, thanks to backward-facing seats which are being installed in all new planes….The Navy has decided to install the seats after five years of development and testing showed they gave passengers much more protection for the entire back, neck, head and parts of the arms and legs in sudden stoppages. The human body can absorb more shock by the back than by the chest and abdomen, flight surgeons say.” The unsigned article cites two Royal Air Force accidents involving a four-engine Hastings and a two-engine Valetta. Both had rear-facing seats that were credited with minimizing injuries to passengers.
Aft-facing seats were used in Britain and the U.S. as early as 1945, according to the article, but “it took time to prove their advantages justifying the added cost of converting the seats….Navy passengers seem to like the rearward-facing seats. BUAER [the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics] distributed questionnaires to passengers during first months of experimentation with them. More than 500 were questioned after a flight, with only a few voting against them and none advancing a convincing reason for their opinions.”
Not long afterward, Britain’s Flight magazine ran an editorial in its July 16, 1954, issue praising a talk by one G./C. A.C. Dudgeon, D.F.C., of Britain’s Transport Command. “It was an informative, persuasive and entertaining talk, and it put the advantages of the aft-facing seat into very clear perspective—no wild claims, no concentration on one aspect of survival to the exclusion of all others. Subsequently a very lively discussion developed and someone called for a show of hands. I was surprised to see that four-fifths of a reasonably well-informed audience (consisting of members and guests of Aviation Forum) were in favour of the rearward-facing seat for all civil transport aircraft.”
Dudgeon was an early crusader for aft-facing seats, citing research dating back to 1942. The Flight editorial dismissed as “fatuous” the airlines’ worry that passengers would view aft-facing seats as an admission that accidents were possible. “One might carry this argument further,” wrote Flight’s editors, “and advocate the abolition of lifejackets and instructions on how to wear them.”
The same magazine revisited the subject in 1964 with another editorial, “Rearward-facing Seats NOW?,” that provided more technical detail. The center of gravity of a decelerating person is six to nine inches higher when facing aft than when facing forward due to the placement of the seatbelt, according to the article. Because the force of impact would be applied higher on the seat, airlines would have to strengthen the seat’s attachment to the floor. This, the editorial acknowledged, would add weight, and would translate to fewer passengers or the need to carry more fuel. “At present, with airlines losing money almost everywhere, it is only too easy to understand their antipathy for this subject,” say the editors. Yet they also cite a 1958 accident involving an airliner in Munich, Germany, which crashed on takeoff with the Manchester United soccer team on board. Those in forward-facing seats were killed, and those in aft-facing seats were saved.
In 1983, Richard Snyder, a research scientist studying crash protection and transportation safety at the University of Michigan, published a paper titled “Impact Protection in Air Transport Passenger Seat Design.” Snyder wrote, “Data appear to overwhelmingly substantiate that the seated occupant can tolerate much higher crash forces when oriented in the rearward-facing position.” He concluded that aft-facing seats were safer, and still holds to that view today. Now retired from teaching, he replied by email from his home in Arizona, “The basis for providing aft-facing seating impact crash protection is substantial and supported by over half a century of experience.”
Despite the research, we all face forward. Car companies, including super-safety-conscious Volvo, aren’t planning to turn passenger seats around anytime soon, and newborns are the only ones who face aft in automobiles. Most train and bus seats face forward. Airplanes just follow conventional practice.
That didn’t stop Bern Case from campaigning to change the standard. In the summer of 1987, Case was working at the Tri-City International Airport in Saginaw, Michigan (today he’s the airport manager for the Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport in Oregon) when Northwest Flight 255 had a disastrous accident on its next stop after Saginaw. The MD-82 had barely taken off from Detroit when it stalled and crashed into the embankment of a freeway overpass, killing 155 passengers and crew members. Only four-year-old Cecilia Cichan survived.
As Case learned the details of the tragedy, he became convinced that rear-facing seats would have saved lives. Throughout the 1990s, he contacted agencies, companies, and airlines, pushing the idea of rear-facing seats. By the end of the decade, he’d given up. “These numerous studies are just ta-ta’d away with clichés,” he says today. “Airlines say passengers wouldn’t like to face backward. But military airplanes and corporate jets have them.” And, he adds, their passengers report no problems. When former president Bill Clinton came to Oregon during the 2008 presidential campaign, Case was invited to board his charter plane, and noted that Clinton had chosen a rear-facing seat.
“Another objection you hear is cost,” says Case. He thinks it’s a non-issue. “The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration ] doesn’t need to say, ‘Change your planes overnight.’ ”
In fact, the FAA doesn’t seem concerned about the matter one way or the other. “Basically, we set standards and the airlines decide how they want their airplanes built,” says Alison Duquette of the agency’s public affairs office. There might be some concern about passengers evacuating an airplane with rear-facing seats, she adds, although “There has been no definitive research on the subject that we’re aware of. [It’s] just a factor that has to be considered.”
According to David Castelveter of the Washington, D.C.-based Air Transport Association, “There is no difference in the safety of commercial airliner seats—only differences in their weights. There can be a lot of back-and-forth on passenger preferences and reasons for them. Nonetheless, most [passengers] would give the nod to forward-facing.” But the association could not produce any surveys or studies supporting this contention, and does not have a policy on the safety of aft-facing seats. Nor does the Flight Safety Foundation, based in Alexandria, Virginia.
So we asked a manufacturer. Sandy Angers of Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ public relations office replied by email: “We are not familiar with any study or survey pertaining to passenger preference of aft-facing vs. forward-facing seats. Airlines traditionally conduct their own market research and may have that data.” As for which is safer, “Boeing does not have a position on whether aft-facing seats offer greater or less safety. All seats must meet regulatory safety standards.”
We weren’t able to find surveys of passenger preference for airplane seating, either. But Alison Trinkoff, a former doctoral student at Johns Hopkins and now a nurse at the University of Maryland, wrote a paper in the American Journal of Public Health in 1985 about preferences on the Washington, D.C., Metro subway system, which offers both forward- and aft-facing seats in every train car. She found that only 25 percent of adults chose aft-facing seats, while 66 percent of children chose them. Trinkoff concluded, “While many adults may prefer to ride facing forward, others might opt to face rearward if safety advantages were known and appropriate seating was made available.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, British Airways (then British European Airways) flew Tridents with half the seats facing backward, and the airline still has some aft-facing seats in business class. Two years ago, a U.K.-based company called the Premium Aircraft Interiors Group began promoting a design called the Freedom Seat for commercial wide bodies, in which every other seat in each row faces aft. The Freedom Seat is more about comfort and economy than safety, however—the shoulders of passengers in adjacent seats can intrude slightly into the space above the legs of passengers to their left and right if they face the opposite way. The configuration translates to an additional column of seats down the length of the economy class cabin of a wide body, and four inches added to the pitch, or the front-to-back spacing between seats. That means 21 more seats in the economy cabin of a Boeing 777 and 50 more in an Airbus A380. “Nobody’s taken us up on it yet,” says business development director Ben Bettell. “I think the main reason is the eye-to-eye contact.” British Airways has solved that problem in their business class cabin with dividers for privacy.
Bettell says that because airplane seats have been facing the same direction for 50 years, airlines may find it hard to adopt radically new seating ideas. He’s hopeful that this will change, and says that one U.S. airline, whom he declines to name, is interested in the company’s aft-facing seats.
As for whether passengers sitting in those seats would be safer, Bettell declines to comment, promising only that the seats will be manufactured to all necessary safety standards.
Link.
This idea of rear facing airplane seats are very intriguing and interesting for me. I have been travelling several times using an airplane, and to be honest, I do not really like airplane, airplanes make me nauseous, because the smell of the plane’s cabin and the motion of the airplane. I do not really know, if the airplane seats are going to be faced backwards, is it going to increase or decrease the nausea. But, if facing the airplane’s seats backwards guarantee that it will be safer for the passengers, then I think that the idea of rear facing airplane seats should be implemented to all airplanes. I think that the aviation safety board should do more research and experiments on this matter, and if they already have the conclusion, if it is true that rear facing airplane seats are more safe than forward facing seats, aviation safety board on every country should told and implement the new backward facing airplane seats on every airlines.
ReplyDeleteI get the logic in how rear facing seats might help passengers survive an aircrash. When the plane crashes all the force and momentum drives and pushes everything inside including the passengers forward. With seatbelts being the only thing keeping us from going forward really fast and sudden, it might cause some potential harm. However with backwards facing seats it might be that the entire back of the seat will be holding us when that force pushes us forward. The problem i can think of is during take off and landings, when we take off the force pushes us back and normally the back of the seat is there to absorb our whole body. With rear facing seats it is reversed with the seatbelt being the thing that holds our bodies to the seat. That may cause a proble as all that force is now focused on your abdominal area. Since it is applicable in many trains, why shouldn't airplanes have rear facing seats?
ReplyDeleteMy comment is still the same as what I said in the class weeks ago: I don't think it's a good idea. After we discussed this topic in class, I have the chance to actually think about experiencing the rear-facing seats when I got on the plane last week. While I sat through the whole journey, I imagined if the plane has rear-facing seats and I knew it right away that I won't like it. First, the passengers will have nausea due to the plane's backward flying. Second, if something dangerous approaching from ahead of the plane, the passengers won't know because they only can see the back view of the plane through the windows. Last but not least, I think it will ruin the interior design of the plane and also screw the order of the seats up. I mean, there are some planes which have business and economic classes, it just doesn't feel right to put the business class in the back of the economic class, yet it also doesn't feel right to put them in front of the economic class which is in the back side of the plane.
ReplyDeleteWe have discussed this topic before in the class. Some people said that rear-facing seat plane will be safer, even though i don't know exactly why. It is said that it is already proven that it's safer. It is also said that it can reduce collison damage when it has an accident. But, facing backwards of course can make people feel nausea. Well, i will feel nausea if i sit on the rear-facing airplane seat. Based on my experience using train, train sometimes moving backwards, and it makes me nausea all the way the trip. I don't know if it is different from plane, but i think it will make people nausea also even more. Making a new plane with seats facing backward is easy. But, what about the current planes that already have seats which facing forward? Do they are going to change the seats from forward to backward? I think it will take a lot of money of course, since they have to change so many seats in the plane. But, as a person, i will prefer the seats that facing forward.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a toddler my father took me to museum where they show military memorabilia, including aircraft. I noticed that the plane in one exhibit, which closely resembles a Boeing-737, having rear facing seats. I was intrigued by that question of why that plane has rear facing seats, but I dismissed it as a one-time occurrence. Now that I’m older, I recalled that event after I watched a documentary on rear facing seats in trains, and another one on flight safety. I learned that rear facing seats are safer because they reduce the effects of impact on the human body; by redirecting the force of the impact, which would normally be exerted by the seatbelt into your waist, into your back with a larger surface area thus decreasing pressure. This concept is also used in military aircraft to increase the chances of survival for the passengers. However, this concept isn’t used by commercial aircraft. After much thought, I came to the conclusion that rear facing seats, though safer, would be less comfortable. Airlines would want to make sure air travel is as comfortable as possible for their passengers. Air travel has also very low accident rates, to the point in which is statistically considered the safest way to travel. Add to that, the estimated cost of applying backward facing seats in all aircrafts of an airline. These factors contribute to the implementation of rear facing seats in commercial aircraft to be more costly than beneficial. The use of rear facing seats would cause discomfort to passengers during takeoff, which would be considered unnecessary due to the long safety record of commercial air travel.
ReplyDeleteA rear-facing airplane seats? Woah I think that is a very bad idea. There are no vehicles or transportation in the world that have a rear-facing seats which indicate that it is not suitable for any matter whatsoever. I very disagree with this idea because passenger that facing rear side is tend to be dizzy when looking out of the window and even if they not looking out of the window is just the same. I once had a rear-facing seat on a train to Bandung and it is so uncomfortable because when I looked outside and saw the roads and buildings are moving in wrong direction it makes me dizzy. It is not a good idea because I think passengers will become alerted quicker when facing forward because they will see if there is any danger or maybe an engine failure. So I think they have to conduct more research to see whether it is effective or not.
ReplyDeleteI do not know how it feels on air but when I was a kid, I used to try sitting in my car the opposite way. I tried to lean my back on the chair that is supposed to be in front on me and I was facing the back of my car. Based on this experience, I really felt dizzy that time and almost puked. Land transportation and air transportation might be different but if it is the same then I do not think that it is a good idea. also, the design of a plane might be change if they want to make a rear-facing airplane seat. It is not cheap and if it doesn’t work and get less customer they will lose lots of money. The best way is for the airplane to make the chair rotatable. With this, people can choose whether they want to sit backwards or forward. This will be more flexible for both parties.
ReplyDeleteFor me this is a very bad idea because most People wouldn’t want them. British European Airways used to fly Trident jets with both forward- and rear-facing seats, and people would kill for a seat facing the front. On trains it is always the forward-facing seats that are worn out.
ReplyDeleteAircraft that do have rear-facing seats. For nervous fliers hoping to improve the odds of survival in the unlikely event of a crash, take note: some planes do have rear-facing seats. Unfortunately, they will cost you a small fortune, they are found in business class (or on private jets). Some of BA's business class cabins feature rear-facing seats, Premium cabins on BA, American Airlines, Etihad and United something feature seats that face in both directions. And tales of motion sickness appear few and far between. They might be safer, but that’s not why airlines have them. It’s about saving space, and not about safety reasons.
I may not know on which type of plane rear facing seats is implemented, and i may not even know about aeroplane models in general ,but I can say that this discussion is about which should be prioritized, safety or comfortability in a commercial airline. Personally I would always choose safety because what is the point of feeling comfortable knowing that you are in a dangerous situation. But, then again, if the flight is so uncomfortable you wouldn’t even take the flight itself. From my point of view, flying with front facing seats is not that comfortable, so if they decided to use rear facing seats then I would unbearable to fly. And, yes it is safer for a rear facing seat ,but it is actually quite rare for a plane to have an accident. So the conclusion is, it is about the comparison between the level comfort sacrificed and safety gained.
ReplyDeleteFor more than a century, ever since the first scheduled commercial flight, passengers have – with very few exceptions – faced forwards. From a safety point of view I don't think people wanted the idea. However, for nervous fliers hoping to improve the odds of survival in the unlikely event of a crash, take note: some planes do have rear-facing seats. Unfortunately, they will cost you a small fortune – they are found in business class (or on private jets). And nowadays many better low carrier cost, and most of all many people only care about the ticket fare! nothing else. That's why low carrier cost is winning in many airplane industry. But my argument is actually simple enough; we don't like backward facing seats on planes for the same reason we don't have backward facing seats in cars, we like to see where we are going.
ReplyDelete