Hasta La Ideas

With Paralympic athletes competing in London this week, the designers at Priestmangoode took the opportunity to rethink air travel for passengers with reduced mobility (PRM). The Air Access concept contains two elements: a wheelchair that can transport passengers onto and off the plane, and a fixed-frame aisle seat on the aircraft which can be mated to the wheelchair to create a regular airline seat.

Access to and from an airplane seat can be an awkward experience for any traveller, but when David Constantine, co-founder of international development organization Motivation, gave a talk at the Priestmangoode offices, the designers decided that something needed to change and that mobility challenges for PRM should be addressed. With over 15 years experience designing aircraft interiors, Priestmangoode is especially interested in the passenger journey—we’ve written about their Moving Platforms concept focused on getting people to their final destinations more seamlessly and if you’ve recently been in-cabin on Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS, Kingfisher, Qatar or Malaysia Airlines you’ll be familiar with their work.

Air Access addresses the needs of 20% of the United Kingdom’s adult population with some form of disability or mobile difficulty. The two-part design allows for:

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