Beyond bread and circuses?

Wider” 737 seats not what they seem

Hidden behind closed doors on the B/E Aerospace stand, barred to media, were a new generation of seats launched by US domestic carrier Southwest Airlines. Despite this secrecy, it would appear that the seat is an evolution of B/E’s slimline

It’s about distracting you from how much your knees hurt.

Pinnacle seat used on Jetstar, Air New Zealand (domestic) and other airlines, but with narrower armrests and therefore able to be called “wider”.

“The new aircraft seats are the widest economy seats available in the single-aisle 737 market,” Bob Jordan, Southwest executive vice president and chief commercial officer, insisted. That’s technically true – they’re just as wide as all the other 737 seats – but the general media attending AIX simply assumed that simply making armrests narrower makes the seats themselves wider.

Southwest’s previous ‘Evolve’ seats were faux-slimlines, where rather than redesigning the entire seat the airline essentially cut away some foam and added new covers. Passengers weren’t impressed – and they shouldn’t be particularly impressed by this new evolution either. Be skeptical and rigorous when looking at the number of inches in an airline’s width numbers from hereon in.

Aircraft are increasingly connected…

The connected aircraft (a process also known in the best 1990s “add an e- to things to make them seem modern” fashion as e-enablement) is finally a reality, with aircraft connectivity, passenger WiFi, aircraft tracking, flightdeck communications and aircraft health monitoring all operational aboard carriers including Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines.

Questions remain, however, about just how secure it is to mix the streams of passenger connectivity and safety services. As is usual before the US’ season of internet security conferences, a network researcher (Chris Roberts) claimed he was able to “hack a plane” via publicly accessible ports at his seat, including having sight of functions including “fuel rebalancing, thrust control system, flight management system, [and] the state of [aircraft]

#HowManyPEDs

A generally unaddressed issue at AIX is the increasingly worrisome number of personal electronic devices taken aboard aircraft by passengers. Most PEDs are powered by lithium-ion batteries that have a nasty habit of catching fire in a thermal runaway that is unable to be put out by the current generation of extinguishants, requiring instead complete immersion in water in order to contain the heat and fire from the cell. With frequent reports of devices and their batteries catching fire and/or being crushed within seating mechanisms, effective action by regulators is needed in an era when an ETOPS 370-certified Airbus A350 can be over six hours from the nearest diversion airport.

The new generation of PED holder options is remarkably widespread, with options varying from a transparent bag hung from the seatback in front (the Avio Interiors option) to a groove in the meal tray (on Sogerma’s Solstys III business product, the next generation of the product currently installed on Etihad, Thai, and others) to a seatback fold-down clip, flip-up stand or bungee-cord apparatus (as demonstrated by Recaro) to secure devices during cruise.

And it’s the “during cruise” part that’s most telling. The head impact criterion (HIC) of safety testing has tripped up many proposals, since the equivalent of a bowling ball (i. e. , the human head) slamming towards a glass screen at 16G is lethally problematic. As a result, most PED holder solutions are intended to fold in, down, up or back for takeoff and landing, and are only intended to be deployed during the cruise phase of flight. controllers”.

United Airlines spokesperson Rahsaan Johnson stated to Australian Aviation that, “given Mr Roberts’ claims that he has manipulated aircraft systems while in flight, a clear violation of United policy, we’ve decided it’s in the best interest of our customers and crew members that he not be allowed to fly United. Notwithstanding his attempts, we are confident our flight control systems could not be accessed through techniques he described. ” Clearly, there are questions to be asked of information security experts about the extent to which aircraft are vulnerable. A sensible airline would invite a red team of “white-hat” (in other words the good guys) hackers on board for penetration testing of the public areas of the aircraft – and, indeed, semi-public areas like the panels available to crew in galley and office areas – and publicise the results under standard ethical disclosure procedures.

Yet passenger broadband benefits are clear – despite its lack of traction within Australia, inflight WiFi is the norm in the US and gaining speed in Europe and Asia. Passengers are increasingly surprised and largely disappointed when their flight doesn’t have WiFi, rather than when it does.

Aircraft tracking, too, has clearly defined benefits. Naturally, it is helpful from a safety perspective to ensure that an aircraft is where it’s supposed to be. But the ability for airlines, airports, border services and air traffic control to all be working from the same source of data can reap significant operational benefits.

Helsinki Airport, for example, has a significant westbound bank of Finnair flights that arrive into Finland from Asia, largely for onward connections to European destinations. Even before a significantly connected aircraft, those westbound widebodies are put in approach and landing order by the number, speed and complexity of their connections. The Osaka flight might be required to slow down for the Nagoya flight to pass it, if there are more passengers with tighter connections on the latter. More and better information from these flights will only make this process more efficient.

Aircraft health monitoring has been in its infancy for some years, but the rise of more, faster connectivity services with wider bandwidth enables additional data to be gathered, ground-to-equipment interrogation and a reduced administrative flightdeck workload. It was clear at AIX that this will be increasingly important in the era of outsourced equipment contracts for engines and aircraft.

Flightdeck communications, too, are benefiting from the rise of connectivity. And that’s not only with the ground – intra-aircraft communications is about to undergo a colossal revolution.

…and cabin crew will soon be tapping their wrists throughout the flight

In the year of the Apple Watch, all eyes are on the airlines to make use of the wearables revolution. The most obvious additional functionality provided by wearables is notification, and it’s here that the lowest hanging fruit (most likely, fruit juice) can be plucked (ie delivered to a passenger’s seat).

A baseline of passengers placing orders and paying for food and beverages via seatback is already in place. Yet the current workflow is that the passenger makes their selection and it pops up on a screen in the galley. With a connected aircraft, the notification can move to the wrist. Seat 12A would like a refill of orange juice? Just tap, turn,pour and walk. Currently assisting another passenger? Dismiss or snooze notifications with a finger.

Connectivity will even replace the way that flightdecks speak with cabin crew. Simple oneway notifications can be beamed instantly to every crew member, improving everything from updates on flight performance to safetycritical information.

The increasingly widespread adoption of cabin crew tablets, minitablets and phablets by airlines is a key enabler for the spread of flight attendant wearables. Australian Aviation understands that work is already underway to enable multiple smartwatch devices for rank-and-file cabin crew to be synchronised to a single senior crew member’s tablet, either during a preflight briefing or on the aircraft.

Of course, uptime and reliability will be an issue here as well.

American Airlines’ flightdeck electronic flight bag (EFB) iPads recently suffered what a spokesperson called “an issue with a software application”, apparently an issue with a charts app crashing as the result of loading two versions of the DCA (Washington National) chart, which resulted in a significant number of aircraft being delayed while pilots returned to the gate in order to access a WiFi connection to remedy the issue.

While this is approximately a 99. 9 per cent reliability since the introduction of the iPad EFBs in 2013, the questions need to be asked: is this the right level of reliability? Can more be done? Can it fail more elegantly? Should WiFi be required or can a cellular signal solve these issues without requiring a return to gate?

Throughout the aircraft, it’s about the “hold and charge” PED issue

In the 12 months since the first generation of iPad holders were all the rage of AIX 2014, the airline interiors industry has been hard at work refining and updating a second generation. Interestingly, the trend has moved from just answering the question of “what do I do with this PED when my tray is down and I am having a bite to eat?” to add “and what do I do about my rapidly declining battery charge?” to the mix.

Right before AIX, tiny startup SmartTray clinched a massive distribution deal with at-seat socket powerhouse Astronics for its products, setting the tone for the combined question. A series of updated safety video notifications and crew reminders about the egress issues with charging electronics during takeoff and landing – namely, that either all passengers or solely travellers in the exit rows must not be charging devices to avoid any entanglement during emergency egress – have only added lithiumion fuel to the inextinguishable fire of questions around PED safety.

Fishing that herringbone out of Virgin Atlantic’s craw…

Every single player in the business class seating game at AIX showed up with a herringbone seat of some style. Created by Virgin Atlantic in 2003 with the Upper Class Suite, “evolved” upon by Contour (now Zodiac) with the result of a 10- year litigation in the UK patent courts, and practically perfected by Sicma (now Zodiac) and Cathay Pacific with its implementation of the Cirrus seat, the herringbone is clearly the seat du jour of any airline serious about its premium passenger experience.

The first generation was the inward herringbone created by Virgin Atlantic, licensed (and then improved upon) by Air New Zealand and imitated by Delta, Air Canada, Jet Airways and the previous generation ofCathay Pacific’s “coffin class”.

The second was the Sicma Cirrus seat, introduced by US Airways, perfected by Cathay Pacific and implemented slightly differently by a dozen airlines since (including the “sincerest form of flattery” B/E Aerospace Super Diamond product selected by Virgin Australia). The third is the currentseries, ranging from the Airbus Stelia Sogerma Comet (under wraps in the back room at last year’s AIX, but now out in the open) to Recaro’s forgetably monickered CL6710, which is a mixture of the staggered and herringbone layout.

It’s clear that the 2013 verdict in the UK case commonly known as Virgin v Contour has led to asignificant amount of “flattery” within the industry. Whether this will lead to a simple diversification of suppliers of very similar equipment, or serious iterative innovation of what is clearly the product of the next 20 years, will depend on the extent to which airlines can sell their investment in business class product to passengers.

…and don’t forget the rest of the aircraft

Within the economy realm, the trend towards increasingly slimmer seats hasn’t abated, either in short-haul economy or in the fuller featured long-haul seats that truly embody Juvenal’s panem et circences – bread and circuses – to distract passengers from the lack of personal space they are experiencing on modern airliners.

Integrated seat-entertainment products, resulting from seatmakers and IFE providers working together, were on show at several stands at APEX, including Panasonic Avionics’ Jazz seat and an integration with BAE Systems’ IntelliCabin tablet-based system, recently purchased by Indian startup carrier Vistara.

Yet the very fact that seating innovations in economy class are limited to a couple of paragraphs (and a not entirely glowing column in Cabin Pressure this issue) compared with product revolutions from the rest of the aircraft is telling. The story for the increasingly segmented cabins above economy is one of invention and clever product design. In economy? It’s about distracting you from how much your knees hurt and how unpleasant it is to be squeezed increasingly closer to the people next to you.

Australian students work with Airbus on new bassinet idea

A team of Australian students from RMIT and Swinburne has a new proposal for inflight bassinet cribs for infants, and has entered its solution in Airbus’s Fly Your Ideas competition. Australian Aviation sat down with team member Kariza Martin to learn more about what turns out to be a step change in flying with infants.

Martin outlines Team AIRS’ product as “a bassinet that has been designed for Airbus aircraft so that infants can remain in them during the whole flight, even during turbulence”.

Martin continues, “when there is no infant travelling, AIRS is disassembled by aircrew and the bassinet is stowed while the bulkhead support attachment is folded neatly against the bulkhead wall. ” That in and of itself doesn’t sound revolutionary, but a number of features push the barriers of current bassinets: the fact that it swivels, is fully wall-mounted with adjustable height, has an adjustable hood, has integrated handles and an attachment strap, and enables the infant to be restrained comfortably (and hopefully quietly) for the entire flight.

As Martin explains: “The bassinet’s main features are its swivel ability, wall-mount feature, adjustable hood, adult attachment strap, adjustable height and leg cover flip. The swivel ability allows the carer to smoothly adjust the position of the bassinet as required, therefore not needing to wake an infant who is sleeping.

The wall-mount feature allows the bassinet to be removed and not take up space when no infant requires it. ” “The adjustable hood allows the lighting to remain dim for the infant when the cabin lights turn on as lighting is important for infant sleep quality. In order to meet regulations, the adult seatbelt loop is where the carer can put their seatbelt through so that they remain connected to the infant during takeoff, landing and turbulence. The adjustable height is for ergonomic purposes to give carers added comfort,” Martin continues.

“We plan to have the height controlled electronically with buttons at the end of the bassinet. The leg cover is another added precaution in the case of an emergency situation where the carer (along with their airbag) is propelled forward towards the infant.

So that the infant is not impacted at the legs, the leg cover acts as a safety barrier that can be flipped up. Currently, there are no bassinets that have been designed and certified as part of an aircraft structure as none have been made to withstand the loads encountered in an emergency landing as specified by the FAA and EASA. ” Team AIRS is made up of five students, Luke Fazio from Swinburne studying product design engineering, plus RMIT students Kariza Martin, Thang Nguyen and Laila Sezin studying aerospace engineering and business management, and Suk Yeo studying aerospace engineering (also at RMIT). And the team comes with impressive backgrounds too. Sezin and Nguyen are in the third year of their studies, with Sezin having previously interned at Northrop Grumman in Canberra working at the Australian National University’s Advanced Instrumentation Technology Centre. Fazio and Martin are in the final year of their degrees, with Martin having interned at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Rolls-Royce (working in the service engineering team for the Adour engine on the BAE Systems Hawk), and QinetiQ (working on fatigue assessment for the RAAF’s PC-9 fleet).

Yet Team AIRS is more than just its CVs. “With almost half the members being different nationalities from Australian and with all members having backgrounds originating from different countries, we each fly overseas at least once a year,” Martin explains. “Studying in Australia where the land is so large means that for all of us, flights are often in excess of eight hours. In 2014 alone, team members have flown to Bangladesh, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. All members have flown on at least one long-haul flight in the last year. ” It’s that on-the-plane passenger experience that gives the team the confidence that shines through their design. “The idea of a bassinet that could be used throughout an entire flight was

inspired from the desire to create comfort for infants,” Martin says. “Team members travel frequently and often they experience a flight where there is an infant crying due to the discomfort they must be feeling, particularly during turbulence which is when they must be awakened and lap held if they are sleeping in the bassinet as current bassinets are not designed for dynamic flight conditions. Ultimately Team AIRS believes in equal comfort for all. In this case it is the infant who needs their standards increased due to the different sleeping requirements they need. ” But it’s not all just ideas. “The bassinet is being computationally simulated to experience the maximum dynamic loads it must be capable of withstanding as outlined by FAA and EASA regulations,” with Martin noting the current position of the product as at “the finite elemental analysis stage”.

To get to this point, the students were assisted by two Airbus staffers, including mentor Arnaud Evrard from the aerospace giant’s industrial affairs team, who Martin explains was “extremely helpful in providing industry insight on Airbus standards”.

Dr Graham Dorrington at RMIT has also been mentoring the team more locally, with Martin calling him “a vital source of technical advice and knowledge in designing innovative solutions to current air travel. ” During early stages of the design, the team received positive and useful feedback about the design of their bassinet, including around the belts required, cabin configuration issues and other technical requirements.

“So far,” Martin notes, “the feedback has been immensely supportive. Carers, often parents, who travel with infants are very enthusiastic about the idea. The majority state that the current way infants travel no doubt needs improvement and that the proposed solution will meet their and their infant’s needs. ” Follow the progress of the team on Twitter: @Team_AIRS and Facebook: fb. com/TeamAIRS