New first-class seat design will make you dream big

If you’re almost exclusively stuck between a rock and a hard recline in economy class when flying, it’s not always easy to fully appreciate the growing comfort and amenities in all classes ahead of you. So you might want to turn away before seeing this next advance in seating design for first class seating called Breakout, by B/E Aerospace, that can change your space into three forms on a single flight: ottoman-armchair combo, corner office and full bed.

Glenn Johnson, Director of B/E Aerospace’s Advanced Design Group said in the project details:

“The goal is to design for the individual requirements of premium travelers. We set out to remove the compromise of using a seat for every travel function.”

What this basically means is that the space adjusts to the flier, as opposed to the flier adjusting (sometimes painfully) to the seat, or as the lead sentence on the project overview reads, “One size DOES NOT fit all.” Although not as closely molded to an individual passenger as perhaps a 3D printed seat might be one day, it’s still an impressive amount of flexibility, at least according to the renderings.

First there’s a stiff-limbed, mannequin-like woman watching a film on a Surface Pro 3 (and keeping an eye on her yellow handbag) while reclining on a spacious, but mostly traditional airplane seat. Next, a ghostly, translucent bald man looks over computer charts at a corner desk with separate upright chair. Lastly, a corpse-like figure (somewhat reminiscent of Walking Dead) lies in apparent rigor mortis on a fresh bed of clean sheets.

Although the Breakout design still remains on the drawing board, it's impressed enough to become a candidate for the 2015 Community Choice Prize in transportation by Industrial design magazine Core77. If victorious, they might start showing up on wide-body Boeing 777s for which they are intended soon after the product launch in 2016.