Recently onboard an aircraft, a fellow passenger told me that the cabin dividers (walls) inside an aircraft are there to limit your line of sight such that you will not notice the flex of the airplane.
I know that some walls are there because of the presence of a lavatory or are actually used to create a barrier between Economy class and Business class. However as can be seen in the photo below, the circled wall is doing none of the above.
Was my fellow passenger right?
Was my fellow passenger right?
Não.
That photo is taken in a B777-300 (2 aisles, 4 seats in the centre and three at the sides, lavatories only behind the central rows, rows on the left side of the aircraft are one more than the central ones at that location):
As you can see the wall is just were an emergency exit is, and if you will look on the other side of the wall you will find a "jump seat", i.e. a foldable seat used by the crew, and the wall is there for it.
Also, walls help in dividing the aircraft in different classes.
You won't be able to detect any flex in an airliner fuselage sighting down the interior without optical instrumentation of some kind, or a laser. Where partition dividers are used without any obvious purpose, like separating classes or providing something to anchor something to, it's to break up "tunnel effect" of rows of heads in a tube out in front of you seemingly going to infinity, which some people can find disorienting when the big tube is moving, and can even aggravate motion sickness in someone prone to it.