Back to the Future of Seats on a Plane?

The dreaded middle seat in coach may never be the same on long international flights.

Britain's Premium Aircraft Interiors Group, or PAIG, has introduced the Freedom Economy Seat, a three-seat row that flips the middle one backward. PAIG also has a four-seat row in which the middle two face backward.

The configuration, introduced at a trade show in Germany last week, promises to minimize or eliminate the current problems of coach passengers bumping elbows, knees and especially shoulders, typically the widest part of the body. Freedom seats also would give passengers at least two more inches of legroom than conventional seats, PAIG says.

Ben Bettell, the PAIG executive who led the seat design project, says they provide passengers more room while allowing airlines to get 10 passengers across in coach sections of wide-body planes such as the Boeing 777 rather than the current nine. The typical gain for that type of plane would be 21 seats. "It's a win-win situation for the passenger and the airline," he says.

But will travelers be OK with a stranger staring back at them 2 feet away?

Bettell says that fold-out privacy shields built into the seats' head rests will take care of travelers' privacy concerns. And "no one will be watching your movie or looking at what's on your laptop screen."

Freelance travel writer Justin Glow, writing last week on AOL's travel blog, said, "It smells of airline industry folks doing anything they can to squeeze more people onto a flight."

But posted responses to his comment were split about evenly. Several responses noted that British Airways already offers aft-facing seats in its Club World business-class sections.

And even Glow allows that more revenue for airlines is fine if it comes without cost to passenger comfort. "I'm all for it if it makes my ticket any cheaper."

PAIG and its design partner, Acumen, used experts from 12 major international carriers as a focus group in developing the seats. None of those 12 - which Bettell said he can't identify because of non-disclosure agreements - has placed an order yet. "But this is a real product that we believe you will see flying in the not-too-distant future."

At the request of several carriers, PAIG is now considering a wider Freedom seat configuration for first-class sections of narrower planes such as the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, Bettell says.

But the seats are unlikely to find their way to the back of those planes.

"It just won't work in narrow-body economy sections. Those planes are too narrow."

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