Making Airline Travel Feel Less Like Torture

Newsweek, March, 2008 by Daniel McGinn

Carriers are installing ever-more-cushy seats to keep their biggest-spending customers flying.

To the average passenger, an airline seat is a cramp-inducing, ill-fitting device that’s the closest most of us will ever come to receiving torture. But to Glenn Johnson, an airline seat can be a thing of elegance. Johnson, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, is the chief designer at B/E Aerospace, one of the leading suppliers of airline seating. In his office—where visitors must sit in prototype airline seats, which he uses instead of office chairs—he clicks through a portfolio of seat sketches. He talks excitedly of his vision for revolutionary kinds of new seats—comfortable, functional, even beautiful. “We’re trying to follow what Apple has done with MP3 players...

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