The night before my travel, I report to the airport and check in to my cubicle in the Japanese style hotel. I watch a movie, check the internet and then go to sleep. During the night, I and my fellow passengers are picked up by forklift, loaded in to a cargo plane (with air, etc...) and transported to our destination, where we are off-loaded into the hotel at that airport. We wake, rested and refreshed, ready to do our business in our destination city.

The cubicle set is padded all around with a crash absorbent waterproof honeycomb material and attached to a large, industrial parachute. In case of in-flight emergency, we are simply dropped and recovered by rescue crews. The usable space lost to the protection and recovery areas are more than made up for by the stacking of passengers.

A narrow corridor outside the cubicles is serviced by a lavatory, snack/drink machine, and either an attendant or a door out of the cubicle set which can be opened from the outside by an attendant for all the cubicle sets on the plane. In most cases, they won't have much to do since the passengers will be asleep.

Of course, the major problem with this is that late night / early morning flights are not allowed at most major airports, especially those near residential areas due to noise abatement laws. This form of travel may be restricted to freight airports (FedEx, when you absolutely, positively have to ship yourself there overnight) and require some form of transport into nearby cities by ground.... which brings us to the idea of the same pallet of cubicles being loaded onto a flatbed and ground shipped from an outlying airport to a number of different centrally located hotel like departure or pickup points.
-- James Newton, Jul 26 2010

Example of a Japanese "Capsule" Hotel http://www.yesicanu...sticks.com/capsule/
'bit different, but I think we could adjust to it... especially given the advantages. [James Newton, Jul 26 2010]

Inspired by this Half Baked idea. _22Coffin_20hotel_22_20airplane_20seats
But adding the idea of the "coffins" being in a set which is loaded and unloaded like cargo, dropped with a parachute in case of emergency, and transported to and from the airport on trucks. [James Newton, Jul 26 2010]

I have a half-memory of this sort of thing being posted before, but I may be imagining it.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 26 2010



random, halfbakery