You know those times when you get on a long-haul flight halfway across the world, traveling in a fully packed economy section of the cabin, and end up having a fantastic night of sleep and arrive at your destination feeling all rested and not grumpy at all? No? Us neither.

Traveling through the pandemic may have increased the chances of a row of seats all to yourself. However, as the world opens up and demand returns, this has gone back to being a highly unlikely occurrence.

Some years ago, US aerospace manufacturer Boeing had plans to change all that. In 2015, the company filed a patent for what it called the "Transport Upright Vehicle Support System," lovingly referred to as the "cuddle seat." Let's take a look at what the concept is all about (while silently huffing over the fact that it has not gotten off the ground yet.)

The king of patents

If you thought Airbus filed a huge number of whacky patents each year, Boeing puts the European planemaker firmly in the shade. In 2020, the US granted 560 patents to Airbus (the peak year was 2014 with 717). Its American competitor peaked in 2020 instead, filing an astonishing number of 1,464 patents.

For 2015, the number was "only" 975 - one of them being for the TUVSS (this is perhaps not the most exciting name for a cabin product, but if it gives us a chance to get some proper shuteye in economy, we are not complaining).

Just like Airbus, some of those patents will go on to fly, whereas others will likely be left to gather dust in the archives somewhere. But this particular patent that was filed back in 2015 could be potentially worth revisiting.

As we already established, trying to sleep on a plane in economy is tough. Upright is not a natural sleeping position, and with most economy seats having little or no recline, getting comfortable is a serious issue, particularly on longer flights. It always seems as if just as you have fallen asleep, there is a cramping sensation in your neck//calf/insert any other body part here.

How does it work?

Dubbed the "cuddle seat", (although, in all fairness, it does not look particularly cuddly), the concept works using a backpack that is stored under the seat. The passenger grabs the backpack and clips it into some over-shoulder seatbelts that are attached to the headrest.

The back of the backpack folds up, revealing the "face relief aperture" – a kind of padded circle cutout, a bit like the one you place your face in when you are lying down on your abdomen on a massage table.

The backpack itself is padded, allowing the passenger's chest to be supported. If you're having trouble visualizing this whole experience, Patent Yogi made a handy YouTube video explaining how it works:

It's a pretty odd concept, but it definitely beats putting your face on the tray table. It's not beyond the realm of possibility to think that something like this could work.

Get the latest aviation news straight to your inbox: Sign up for our newsletters today.

Will it ever fly?

Whether or not the "cuddle chair" ever becomes more than a paper idea remains to be seen. In theory, it could work and appears to have been designed to allow easy retrofitting to an existing plane seat.

However, that real estate underneath the seat is kind of crucial. Passengers like to stow stuff there, and there are also essential bits of kit, such as oh, say, lifejackets in that area, which require rapid and easy access.

In today's hygiene-conscious world, this type of modification would just add to the surfaces that need to be cleaned between flights. Passengers aren't going to want to put their faces in a hole that someone else has just been snoozing in (and possibly drooling all over).

However, we could imagine this as something you could buy yourself (although we won't promise your window seat neighbor won't need to get you out of it in regular intervals to use the lavatory). The seat straps could be easily added to the headrest by the passenger, and the backpack could double as a sleep aid and a carry-on bag.

Would you buy a "cuddle' backpack" so you could sleep in your economy seat? Let us know in the comments.