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Concept plane cabin design would see air travellers sit stacked on top of one another inside individual pods.

Plane cabins of the future could do away with traditional seating plans in favour of radical pod-style options made possible by 3-D design, a firm has suggested.

London-based Factorydesign is behind the Air Lair (pictured above), which sees single seats stacked on top of one another in a "honeycomb-like" manner.

It created a prototype for Zodiac Seats, a company that supplies first and business class seating for airlines.

The pod layout would benefit single travellers who want to have minimal interaction with others while in the air, Adam White, Factorydesign's director, told Skift.com.

"[Zodiac] wanted us to create something outside the ordinary, something that would be new. But at the same time, we knew we wanted something that we felt had a genuine intelligence in terms of [use of space]," he said.

He denied that the seats would be difficult to get in and out of, comparing it to hopping into a large 4x4 vehicle, but admitted that they would not suit passengers with mobility issues. Once inside, passengers would be able to sit upright or lie flat.

The designer also suggested airlines should adopt different way of grouping passengers on board an aircraft, in zones according to passenger needs rather than simply Economy, Business and First classes. Such an arrangement would allow for a wider variety of passengers to have a more comfortable flight, he said.

"You would have an A-Zone, a B-Zone, maybe down to five or six different zones in an aircraft," he said.

"[The Air Lair] would be a restricted zone and it's restricted because the nature of the seating is different and therefore the activity is different. You would only want to be in an Air Lair pod if you wanted to have no contact with other passengers. It's a seat for single people. It is a private space."

At this stage, however, there are no concrete plans to introduce Air Lair pods into any aircraft.

The Telegraph, London