New Airline Seat for Bigger Passengers Still Seems Uncomfortable

There’s no getting around the fact that flying sucks, and none of the changes (for anyone who can’t afford a business class ticket) airlines have made in recent years have made it any more tolerable. Flying is especially crappy for heavier passengers, who are still subjected to the same discomfort and inconvenience their skinnier peers experience, only at premium prices and with more shame.

A British design company called Seymour Powell thinks it may have solved the problem facing heavier fliers, namely, that economy seats are like spinal cord prisons designed only for the wasp-waisted passengers in airline safety guides. The company’s new seat, called “Morph,” can be widened or reduced based on the space needs of each individual passenger, so passengers can fight it out for extra space with their fists and elbows, the way nature intended when it let us shatter its most sacred law of flight.

Morph is a row of three seats is built like a sofa, with armrests that can move laterally, giving bigger passengers more space, and itty-bitty passengers (like children) less space. Of course, with more space at their disposal, bigger passengers can probably expect to pay more money and smaller passengers can expect pay less money, which might mean that airlines have found yet another way to sap passengers’ humanity.

As always, though, there’s a catch: Morph doesn’t recline, which initially sounds awful until you remember the last time you flew and that dickpile of a human sitting in front of you dropped his seat back and shattered your kneecaps the second the plane reached its cruising altitude.