Is this seat taken?
Airport waiting areas can get crowded enough as it is – we don’t need pillars to take up space. When flights are delayed, these waiting areas could get pretty crowded, and people find themselves traveling to different gates only to have a place to sit down and rest their feet (before boarding a plane and resting their feet for hours).
We don’t expect these waiting areas to be comfortable, and still we try to make the best out of our time there and find the ultimate sitting position to pass the long hours before our flight takes off with a minimum level of comfort. The position of this chair makes it impossible to even sit there, let along get comfortable, and it just seems like a waste of space.