Some airlines are introducing amenities and getting creative with seat design to lure budget-minded travelers like Sharpe.
Amazingly, because of the new seat design, the airline says coach passengers will be blessed with an extra inch of legroom.
Lufthansa embraced seat manufacturer Recaro's pioneering design, purchasing 32, 000 new seats across the fleet.
Personally, I have my eye on an even smaller jet, the rumored single-engine, four-seat pocket-rocket from Cirrus Design. (If the one engine fails, pull a lever and a parachute will float you and the plane to a soft landing.) One of the two brothers who founded Cirrus told me the Cirrus jet would go 300 knots, or 345 miles per hour.
Beijing Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy helped design the 6, 000 seat venue in Stratford, east London.
"If you want to design something in your front seat, you have to go through a rigorous certification process, " explains Janis Vanags, Air Baltic's vice president of corporate communications.
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Equal in excellence to the 264-seat main theater but presenting a striking design contrast, this secondary screening room has a hot pink entrance and features exposed loudspeakers and a grey, perforated acoustical wall and ceiling surface, making it more of an exposed machine for the moving image.
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The chain, which had scotched its signature blue A-frame design in favor of big boxes that can seat more customers, is testing a new prototype that uses the A-frame as a restaurant's entranceway.
The four-seat coupe has a crisper body, upgraded and streamlined cabin design and more leg-room than its predecessor, which was first offered in 2003.
That versatile seat, the heads-up positioning of the handlebars, and the lightweight design are well-suited for navigating urban traffic.
The Bentley concept illustrates better than words what happens when shared-platform imperatives so-called hard points such as the size of an engine or height of a seat or dimensions of a gas tank are the primary drivers of design.
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Its designers recently have "taken a little out of the seat and thigh measurements, cleaning up the overall look, " said Doug Conklyn, senior vice president of global design.
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