Free Republic

It’s a sign of our air-rage times: three separate planes forced to divert in the space of two weeks when cramped passengers went ballistic over someone reclining their seat. In one episode, two undercover air marshals subdued and handcuffed the irate traveler in question. In another, a woman swore at the reclining passenger in front of her and screamed for the pilot to “put this plane down.” The dust-ups don’t shock Robert Mann, a former airline executive who now runs an airline-industry analysis company. “August is the highest load-factor month of the year for a North American carrier, and it’s...

Monarch is to introduce non-reclining seats across its entire fleet of planes. The light-weight design, to be rolled out this summer, has been launched to create more ‘living space’ for passengers after customer research showed the existing style was unpopular. It comes after surveys revealed that nine in ten travellers wanted reclining seats banned, and voted them one of the most common causes of mid-flight anger.

We're smarter and more creative lying down than standing up, says a researcher who believes this helps to explain Archimedes' eureka moment. Darren Lipnicki from the school of psychology at the Australian National University (ANU) found that people solve anagrams more quickly when they are on their backs than on their feet. He said his research, which will be published in the journal Cognitive Brain Research, relates to how neurotransmitters are released. Lipnicki tested 20 people, who were asked to solve 32 five-letter anagrams, such as 'osien' and 'nodru' while standing and lying down. "I found anagrams were solved more...