The coming cabin revolution

But from inside the aircraft, a series of problems, coincidences and externalities is about to create a perfect storm of pressure. And that pressure will explode into changes for the cabin interiors industry.

After the airframe, the second most expensive part of an aircraft is the cabin interior, from bulkheads to seats, lavatories to galleys, and everything in between. These products are engineered to astounding extents for safety, while trying to match the modern, premium feel that passengers’ expectations lead them to demand.

Slamming seats down testing sleds to certify them to the 16g dynamic crash testing standard, including at an angle, is why many seats, cabins — and indeed aircraft — have been delayed in production and delivery in recent years. It feels like the industry has turned something of a corner on responding to these demands, but renewed demands are inevitable.

Yet the basic cabins, with their windows and overhead bins and everything else, also need updating for many of these brand new airliners.
It’s not just the 787, which is hitting its decade and needs a cabin refresh, as outlined in last month’s Australian Aviation. It’s the 737, where the MAX is identical on the inside to the last eight years of 737 production, thanks to the Boeing Sky Interior. It’s the A320, where the last update was a decade ago and wasn’t exactly a huge update at that. It’s the A330 and the 777, neither of which look the part when compared with their newer stablemates.

So what’s an airline to do, especially in the days of photograph-based social media where everyone and their Aunt Raelene realises that the shiny new plane the airline ads promised them is actually a 25-year-old banger with tape, adhesives, fillers and more keeping the bits in place?

Enter the upgrade part of the cabin industry. Perhaps surprisingly, US airline Delta has been at the forefront of this, upgrading its elderly fleet of Boeing 757 aircraft to feel like the very latest modern aircraft, with the help of Zodiac Aerospace’s ECOS cabin product.

(ECOS was, prior to the latest round of conflict in the Middle East, known as ISIS, and was renamed for obvious reasons. Delta uses the 757 cabin that was originally known within Zodiac as “Project Amber” and later rolled into the ECOS family.)

The improvements are about big new swing-down bins, which have been stress-tested to within millimetres to ensure that they work with modern luggage. They’re about swish new passenger service unit pods that feel very Star Trek, which come with an ambient light and allow passengers to control their own environment. They’re about the Binsight system, which illuminates a green light above the bin if there’s space or a red light if it’s full.

And they’re all washed with mood lighting that lets airlines make the look and feel of their tube-with-wings just that little bit different from everyone else’s.

Zodiac isn’t alone in this. Much of the world is happy to operate aircraft from the secondhand market or as a second generation of leasing clients, but passengers in these markets have Instagram, Facebook and Twitter too, and growing middle classes in the developing world have options of who they fly. Diehl Aerospace has been offering a cleverly engineered aftermarket aft-bulkhead solution that improves on Airbus’ own Space-Flex option, which increases passenger space by moving lavatories to the rear wall of the cabin and shrinking them (and the adjacent galleys) a bit.

The airframers want a big part of this market, and not just on factory-fresh jets. The Airbus Services unit of the largest European manufacturer is readying to refit the A380 fleets of both Qantas and Singapore Airlines, and while details haven’t been released there’s a lot of options to draw on.

‘The airframers want a big part of this market.’

Some of those options come from the Airspace cabins, an Airbus interiors project to bring the A330 and A320 family aircraft (including their re-engined neo members) up to the standard of a modern aircraft. Since the upper deck of an A380 is roughly the width (if not the exact shape) of an A330 — and indeed since the superjumbo itself is a decade old and could use a bit of a spruce-up to attract new buyers that aren’t Emirates — look for some of the Airspace revolution to rub off on the A380’s cabin as they begin peeking out from under wraps.