Airlines around the world are working hard to ensure their business class passengers get the best possible night’s sleep at 35,000ft. Bob Papworth checks on the progress It is highly unlikely that Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum has ever heard of Louis Arthur Rumbold, but His Highness' airline nevertheless owes a debt of gratitude to the British entrepreneur. In 1933, Rumbold set up his business making aircraft interiors for the Hatfield-based De Havilland Aircraft company. Rumbold's fledgling outfit has since gone through a variety of incarnations and is now better known – albeit only marginally – as Contour Premium Aircraft Seating. Britax-owned Contour has, in its time, provided aircraft seats to British Caledonian and British Airways, Air France and Air New Zealand, Gulf Air and yes, you've guessed it, the Sheikh's own airline, Emirates. The Contour client list also includes Air Canada, United Airlines, US Airways and American Airlines. And Qantas, Cathay Pacific, ANA All Nippon and Dragonair. And, for good measure, the UK Queen's Flight – first the old VC-10 and now the rather newer BAe146 in which Her Majesty makes many of her overseas trips. Perhaps Contour's biggest claim to fame, however,is that it was the contractor behind Virgin's 2004 Upper Class Suite (they're not called “seats” any more), Sir Richard Branson's response to British Airways' flatbed first. When BA first introduced its Club World (business class) beds, the sceptics said they would never catch on. High-spending executives, ever eager to cut a professional dash, would give the wide berth a wide berth; it's difficult to look cutting-edge in a pair of freebie jimjams. The sceptics, as is so often the case, were wrong. Flatbeds and lie-flat seats – the former flat on the cabin floor, the latter tilted at a slight angle to it – are all the rage. Contour’s latest customer is SAS Scandinavian, which last April announced an intention to install lie-flat seats in its business class cabins. At November's Dubai Air Show, French company Evolys, whose client list includes Qatar Airways, luxury carrier PrivatAir, and Airbus Industrie, unveiled its latest model. This year, American Airlines will be installing German-built Recaro lie-flat seats in its Boeing 767 and 777 business class cabins. And British Airways is spending £100 million on a Club World upgrade that will include new business class seating from US-based B/E Aerospace (which, incidentally, has also won the contract to refit Emirates' first class cabins). “In 2000, British Airways revolutionised the industry with its introduction of the first horizontal lie-flat business class seat,” says Michael Baughan, B/E's senior vice-president. “Now British Airways is again raising the competitive bar, and we are pleased to collaborate with them to introduce an entirely new level of comfort and living space for their business class passengers.” While prone passengers make all the headlines, it's really that “living space” which is all-important. A recent American Express survey among 500 business travellers suggests that jet-setting executives are exploiting techno-gadgetry like laptops and PDAs to make more productive use of their travel time. The advantages are obvious. By working on the way, travellers can either cut short their trips to spend more time ensconced in the bosom of their families, or they can indulge in some heavyduty shopping and sightseeing when they arrive. Either way, the ability to toil in transit is key, and that suggests in turn that it's not necessarily the beds that are important, but the extra privacy afforded by the new “suite” designs, the work-friendly elements like larger tables, more stowage space and better lighting, and greater connectivity. After all, for most of us, “working flat out” is only a figure of speech.And even though aircraft beds are undoubtedly getting better, they don't suit everyone. According to Professor Chris Idzikowski, of the UK Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service,there are six common sleeping positions, of which the “log” and the “soldier” are the only ones really suited to necessarily-narrow flatbeds. The “log” and the “soldier” involve lying straight (on one's side in the first instance, and on one's back in the second), with arms pinned to your sides. However, most people (41%, apparently) adopt the “foetus” position, lying on their sides with knees drawn up and arms curled protectively in front – in other words, adopting the widest and shortest possible profile. For maximum comfort, “foetus” sleepers need a bed that is 1.5 metres square, not one that is long and narrow. As for Idzikowski's other three positions, the “yearner”, the freefaller”, and the “starfish” – well, the less said, the better. The professor isn't the only one to query the benefits of the lie-flat seat. Copenhagen-based author and ergonomics expert A. C. Mandal even goes so far as to suggest that for maximum working comfort, seats should actually tipforward rather than recline. “Children will often tilt forward on the legs of their chair to relieve back pressure,” he writes. “By tilting their chairs forward, they avoid bending their backs, allowing the front and back muscles to relax, and thereby sitting in a more comfortable position with a straight back.” It is by no means a universally-accepted view. Another ergonomics expert, Robert Rickover, writes in a paper entitled Chairs, Posture, and the Alexander Technique: “It is our body that sits in a chair, and if we want to improve our comfort and health, our primary attention must be directed at improving our own functioning – that is, what we do with our body when we sit.” Having just agreed to splash out on new first class seats for Emirates’ Boeing 777s, His Highness Sheikh Ahmed must be kicking himself. If only he had realised that passengers have only themselves to blame for their in-flight discomfort, he could have saved himself the best part of €44million.
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