A woman has been pictured sitting in an easyJet plane seat with no backrest.
An image that has gone viral on social media this morning shows a female passenger sitting in an aisle seat that has no backrest, next to another seat also with no back.
The image, shared by Twitter user Matthew Harris, appears to show easyJet flight U22051 from London Luton airport to Geneva.
He captioned the image: “easyJet beats Ryanair to have backless seats” and “How can this be allowed.”
When asked whether the backless seat was an assigned seat, the UK's biggest budget airline told The Independent that “no passengers were permitted to sit in these seats as they were inoperative awaiting repair”.
“Safety is our highest priority and easyJet operates its fleet of aircraft in strict compliance with all safety guidelines.”
The original tweet with the image, taken by Mr Harris’ partner, has garnered thousands of comments and retweets since it was posted earlier today.
In one response, easyJet asked Mr Harris to remove the photograph and to send the airline more information about the incident so it could investigate. He refused.
Although it's highly unlikely backless seats would ever be permitted for safety reasons, there are other bizarre seat design concepts that could soon be installed on planes.
The latest iteration of the Skyrider 3.0 “saddle” seat, designed by Avio Interiors, is more upright than a standard plane seat.
Rather than sit down, passengers sort of "perch" on it with their legs draped down as if they were riding a horse. One critic labelled it a "torture chamber".
The seat has a pitch – the space between one seat and the seat in front – of just 23 inches. Most traditional plane seat pitches in economy are around 30 inches. The 23 inch pitch is of “acceptable comfort for the passenger”, said Avio Interiors.
In July, a game-changing staggered seating design that could make flying in the middle seat more comfortable received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US civil aviation body.
The S1, an innovative seating structure that puts the middle airline seat several inches lower than and further back from the aisle and window seats, has already received orders from an unnamed US airline since gaining approval.
