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Colombian Airline Wants To Make Passengers Stand (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes Budget airline VivaColombia is considering plans to remove all seats from its planes and make passengers stand. They hope the move will drive down fares by allowing them to squeeze more passengers into each flight, opening up air travel to working class Colombians and budget holidaymakers. The no-frills carrier announced last week that it is adding 50 new Airbus 320s to its fleet to capitalise on the country's growing tourist market. The new planes will have more seats and lower running costs with the first one going into service at the start of 2018. VivaColombia's founder and CEO William Shaw told the Miami Herald the airline was looking into vertical travel options. He said: "There are people out there right now researching whether you can fly standing up -- we're very interested in anything that makes travel less expensive." He added: "Who cares if you don't have an inflight entertainment system for a one-hour flight? Who cares that there aren't marble floors... or that you don't get free peanuts?"
Oh dear god yes. I've been on four international flights in the past year to Asia that had a plane turning around after a flight into the US from Mubai. In three of those instances, the flight was delayed because the bathrooms (and to a lesser extent the cabin) required a "greater than normal level of cleaning." About the only other thing that comes close is flying to China, when for some reason everybody needs to shit after taking off, and leaving South Korea after a delay when Asiana or Air Korea breaks out the kimchi to make up for the late flight. Barf.