New Wheelchair Prototype Seat Promises Accessibility for In-Flight Travel
Photo Credit: Molon Labe Seating and JPA Design rendering of the "Freedom Seat" prototype enabling wheelchair use in-flight. Molon Labe Seating / Hank Scott/JPA Design
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Passengers traveling with wheelchairs are a billion-dollar industry often ignored by the airlines. Most passengers with disabilities plan trips with friends or family, with the determining factor being the ease of accessibility for wheelchairs. Trains and buses can accommodate. Airlines are long overdue.
A new airplane seat prototype called the “Freedom Seat," offering passengers with restricted mobility the ability to fly seated in their own wheelchairs, is making the rounds quietly within the airline community in a quest to become the first certified wheelchair in-flight seating.
The brainchild of an undisclosed major airline and Hank Scott, CEO of Denver-based Molon Labe Seating, the Freedom Seat is a wider economy aisle seat that slides over the neighboring chair leaving open a space for a wheelchair to securely lock into place.
The size of the potential market that such an innovation would assist is growing. A market study released by the Open Doors organization shows that 27 million U.S. travelers with disabilities took a total of 81 million trips and spent $58.7 billion on travel in 2018-19, up from $34.6 billion in the prior 2015 study.
Scott is enthusiastic and hopeful for certification of not only the Freedom Seat, which at the end of the day is an airline seat, bu
