You don’t design for the flight; you design for the evacuation. We learned that the hard way decades ago. This looks like it forgot all those lessons paid for by people’s lives.
Then just add additional emergency exits to the plane. Except for a higher total number of passengers I don’t see how this layout would significantly slow down evacuation otherwise. Though I’m by no means an expert.
People’s legs being in that position would negate what is considered a safe evacuation. Modern regulations stipulate that you have 90 seconds to get everyone off the plane safely with 50% of the emergency exits blocked. That’s why you’re required to be seated completely upright with your feet on the floor during takeoff and landing. So you can stand up immediately if anything goes wrong and you need to evacuate.
This accident is one of the reasons why that rule exists. We forget these things:
“It was then, just 90 seconds after the plane came to a stop, that the entire passenger cabin exploded in flame. An unstoppable wall of fire swept forward from the back of the plane, consuming everything in its path, painting every window in brilliant orange. Firefighters tried to fight it, but there was nothing they could do. Captain Cameron, who jumped from the window just seconds before the explosion, would be the last to leave the plane alive.”
Your legs would obviously not be in that position during takeoff and landing. This picture was clearly taken with the seat reclined to show the relatively comfortable seating position during the flight. If you search for any other pictures that are not cropped like this one, you can see that there’s still some space below the seat to put your feet down.
And whenever I disembark from a plane not once have I felt like getting out of my seat is the limiting factor for why it takes so long. The bottlenecks are always the limited number of exits and aisles that every passenger has to squeeze through.
Edit: actually I found a 3d render of the proposed cabine layout here it looks tight but otherwise pretty standard if you ask me, except for the two levels of course.
