Coming soon? Standing instead of sitting on planes

The vertical passenger seat -- or "standing cabin" -- may be the next big cost-cutting move in aviation, according to a new report whose author says the concept could be here within five years. "I stumbled across the idea when I was looking (into) ways to reduce the flight ticket price," Fairuz Romli, who authored the report published in the IACSIT International Journal of Engineering and Technology, tells CNN by email. Romli, an aerospace engineering professor at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, says his motivation is to lower the cost of air travel to a level competitive with buses and trains, CNN reports. Using the popular Boeing 737-300 as an example, his study calculates that a standing cabin would lead to a 21% increase in passenger capacity while dropping ticket prices by as much as 44%. "I'm a frequent flier and most of the times during domestic flights, it feels like the flying time is very short that the aircraft is already descending for landing before you can unfasten your seatbelt after takeoff," he says. "Hence the big question came to my mind: in such a short duration of flight time, do we really need to sit down?" Romli quickly discovered that the idea had already been researched -- most notably by Airbus, China's Spring Airlines and Ireland's Ryanair. Read more