Sikorsky Cockpit Seats
After 39 years flying at Sikorsky, I finally came to the conclusion that the responsibility for the torturous seats rested in a Conspiracy. Not sure whether it was the Illuminati, Yale's Skull and Bones, The Rosicrucians, or whoever, but it was effective, and resistant to continuous efforts by the pilots to correct things.
Over the years we finally got the internal human factors engineers to agree that there was a significant issue here, but then we ran up against the seat manufacturers, and they had no end of reasons why conflicting seat requirements resulted in the present seat : QED, thats it, take it or leave it and no further discussion. Hence my suspicion regarding a conspiracy!
By the way, money isn't the issue here: big discomfort comes at big prices.
Looking to the immediate future, one would suppose that the implementation of fly-by-wire control systems, as long as the designers avoid what Nick Lappos calls the "Electric Horse" approach, and in this case, that is keeping the cyclic controls exactly similar to existing mechanical designs, will allow seat designers greater freedom in the lower cushion/thigh support area.
Thanks,
John Dixson