aisle chair

• Illustration — A set of aisle chairs in Bundaberg Airport, Queensland. • Illustration — An aisle chair inside a Virgin Australia aircraft being used to transport a man to his seat. Prior to the popularization of aisle chairs, disabled passengers often faced obstacles during boarding, deplaning and in-flight. The restrictive space of the aircraft often meant that frequent transfers to and from wheelchairs were often commonplace, causing discomfort for passengers and reducing their independence. Cabin crew often have to allocate their time to helping less physically abled passengers, creating a challenging environment especially if there were no wheelchairs on board. The aisle chair was therefore designed to facilitate boarding and assist with movement for passengers with limited to no mobility inside the cabin. As conventional wheelchairs were too large for the narrow aisles of passenger airliners, they were created as a solution to enable mobility-handicapped passengers to move around for necessary purposes, such as using the lavatory or disembarking. There have been recent innovations to the aisle chair, such as a new seat transfer assist mechanism which makes use of guide rails to secure the aisle chair to the seat. It can also be used to transfer passengers backwards into their seat given enough forward legroom. Most airlines also have on-board aisle chairs for immobile passengers to use during flight.