Unless you’ll be stuck on your flight for 12 hours, most of us are happy to save a few bucks on a no-frills budget airline. To help further cut costs, UK-based Monarch is introducing new seats that are not only lacking the ability to recline, they also feature a built-in tablet holder instead of a touchscreen entertainment centre — but is anyone really going to miss them?
The displays used on those built-in seat-back touchscreens downright suck, especially compared to the high-resolution displays on the iPad and other tablets most people already bring with them. And they still cost airlines hundreds of dollars to install — per seat. Besides, many airlines are moving towards Wi-Fi based in-flight entertainment systems where a downloadable app connects you to free movies and TV shows, and even offer rentable tablets for passengers who didn’t bring their own.
As for the lack of reclining seats, it’s hard to imagine passengers missing them too much — at least on short-haul flights. They might make it slightly more annoying to try to sleep on a plane, but at the same time there’s nothing quite as terrible as having the seat in front of you come crashing back into your lap as soon as the seatbelt light goes off. As far as cost-saving measures go, these new seats actually sound pretty great. [Monarch via Core77]