An expert in the field of travel explained why the headrests on the seats in the cabin of the aircraft are made of a curved shape.
It’s all about deletalization – this term means that everything inside the cabin of the aircraft, including the seats, should be designed to reduce the likelihood of injury to passengers. According to Anthony Harkap, director of a design company working with Boeing, the curved shape of the head restraints is related to passenger safety.
“Absolutely everything on board, including the head restraints, is designed in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of injury to passengers in the event of an emergency. This form of seat ensures that even if you follow Murphy’s law (“If something can go wrong, it will go wrong” – Approx. editors), the passenger will still be safe in such a seat. There is another reason – the headrests are made curved for the sake of aesthetics: they repeat the shape of the portholes, so it’s more beautiful. Interior elements flow from one to another, “enveloping” the client,” the expert shared.
It is clarified that according to safety requirements, all airliners are required to have seats capable of withstanding an impact 16 times greater than gravity. The windows, in turn, have an oval shape also for security purposes. In 1954, two plane crashes occurred at once, provoked by design errors. It is noted that the portholes at that time were square and the sharp corners of the windows created an additional load on the metal at high altitudes – two to three times more than in other parts of the aircraft. As a result, there was a “fatigue” of the metal, which led to the destruction of the aircraft in the air.
Earlier, experts from the international organization ASTM International studied the relationship between people fainting during a flight and the pressure and temperature in the cabin. It turned out that high temperature and pressure in the cabin increase the risk of hypoxia (low oxygen content in the body) in flying.
