Reality on the Rise

Mooting everything from bunkbeds to gyms, what’s inside these 20-plushour flights will make or break their success at the very forefront of what’s achievable – or even desirable – in commercial aviation.

The passenger experience of this bright, futuristic tomorrow is truly not very far away, and will come from the innovative research, design, engineering and development concepts and achievements presented today at trade shows such as the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg every April, and particularly in the Crystal Cabin Awards, the industry’s premier awards event.

Decisions on outfitting need to be taken at the time of ordering an aircraft, including seats, lavatories, galleys, overhead bins, and cabin monuments like bulkheads. It’s all very well to talk of nap rooms, gyms and underfloor economy class dormitories, but if these products are not well on their way to certification now it is becoming increasingly unlikely that they will be ready in time for Qantas to choose them when it makes its airframe decision – and for the sun to come up on them during nonstops from Sydney to New York and London three years hence.

It’s little understood elsewhere in the industry how the engineeringfocused design, iteration, testing, certification, customisation, production and installation of cabins affects passenger experience and airline operations, but affect them it certainly does. Ensuring 16g crashtesting certification of seating, both independent of the remainder of the cabin and with everything else in the aircraft taken into account, together with ensuring accurate production of hard-wearing products for what is becoming increasingly close to a 24/7 schedule, is deeply complex. ‘Over the years, numerous options have been proposed’ According to Airbus, seats alone are a US four billion dollar industry and as carriers from Cathay Pacific to Virgin Australia to United Airlines have shown all too clearly, when this process goes awry, aircraft are stuck on the ground at delivery centres and refit programmes delayed.

Put simply, it’s a good bet that 80 per cent of what we will see in Project Sunrise is already out there, hidden in plain sight, or at the cutting edge of innovation. So what might that 80 per cent – and indeed the remaining 20 per cent – look like? A radical revamp of economy class is unlikely Most people fly in economy, so it’s here we start. A fundamental question for Qantas, for Project Sunrise and for other ultra ultra long-haul flights, is whether economy class will maintain its serried ranks of class seats shoulder-to-shoulder, or get creative with the Layout of Passenger Accommodations (LOPA), essentially the technical and engineering detailed version of a seat map.

Over the years, numerous options have been proposed, including the Cozy Suite from Thompson Aero Seating, which staggers the seats backwards from window to aisle in order to take passengers’ shoulders out of alignment with their neighbours’ and thus providing more width. The Cozy Suite does not currently appear on Thompson’s website, however.

The Molon Labe S2 staggered seat, where the centre seat of the trio is set slightly behind the aisle and window versions, and the Acro S6X, where the centre is slightly forward, are also options if the airline is considering getting creative with the LOPAs.

The concern across the interiors industry, though, is that there are crucial certification, reliability and complexity questions that need to be proved with these products.

Passengers can wreak havoc on seats of all sorts, and eyebrows have been raised at the number of moving (and therefore potentially breakable) parts on Qantas’s current Dreamliner economy seats based on the Recaro CL3710.

Overall, that Recaro seat is most likely the kind of product Qantas will choose for Project Sunrise: one of the new generation of spaceefficient economy class seats, where a revised design for the cross-braced 16g structural integrity of the seat has moved the horizontal bracing forwards, thus allowing space to be sculpted out at passenger knee level.

Recaro probably has the incumbent advantage over other seatmakers such as Collins Aerospace, Safran Seats, Acro, Geven, Aviointeriors and others.

Given the long partnership between Qantas and the German seat-maker, it would not be a surprise to see that relationship continue.

But the greatest question about passenger comfort and space in economy class may well not be about which seats Qantas chooses, but rather about the aircraft.

In economy class, the plane truly matters

Of all the passengers on board the Project Sunrise aircraft, economy class travellers will be most affected by whether Qantas chooses the Boeing 777X or Airbus A350 family of aircraft.

It’s almost entirely a question of geometry. To generalise, Boeing’s slightly wider 777 cabin of 5. 86m allows airlines to just about squeeze in 10 seats, where the A350’s slightly smaller body of 5. 61m does not, without being horrifically narrow to the extent of an Air Asia X widebody configuration.

The details of that generalisation, and those 25cms, will be the battleground of Airbus’s and Boeing’s long-haul economy passenger experience, as well as their sales marketing, over the next two decades.

‘Passengers can wreak havoc on seats’

Boeing says that the resculpted cabin fuselage sidewalls it is creating for the 777X generation will glean an extra 102mm at its widest point – a centimetre per passenger in each row – compared with the existing 777 aircraft, but this has yet to be field-tested or even demonstrated in mockup at key cabin design and engineering shows.

Having mostly been delivered with seats in a spacious 3-3-3 configuration, most 777s flying have now evolved into a 3-4-3 layout, previously billed as the charter/ leisure/short-haul configuration, with only a few holdouts: Delta, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia among them. Narrower seats of 17” and under, plus narrower aisles, are the result, affecting a travelling population that is not getting any smaller (indeed, quite the reverse).

It’s essentially a similar experience to the narrow seats in the 3-3-3 layout on the 787.

The A350, by contrast, has almost universally been delivered with seats in a 3-3-3 layout with 18”-plus seats.

The exception is leisure carrier Air Caraïbes, which has sub-17” seats in a 3-4-3 configuration. Any number of airlines have selected 3-3-3 for their A350 when they operate 3-4-3 on their 777s.

Going to the narrow charter/ leisure/short-haul configuration on the A350 is, therefore, exceedingly unlikely for Qantas. On the 777-8, however, it’s probable.

In terms of pitch, most of Qantas’s long-haul has been 31”, although it sought to mollify critics of the seats in the 787’s narrow 3-3-3 configuration by adding an inch of pitch. It would therefore seem sensible to assume 32” for a 777-8 Project Sunrise, and 31” for an A350, although the spoiler in this question is precisely how many economy class passengers it makes sense for Qantas to try to carry for 20- plus hours.

Expect premium economy to expand in numbers … and perhaps in size

Moving forward in the aircraft, it’s likely that Project Sunrise will have more than the premium economy seats offered on Qantas’s 787-9 Dreamliner.

Premium economy is, by the square centimetre, the most profitable space on most airlines’ aircraft. For ultra long-haul flights, the impetus is greater than ever towards catering for comfort-sensitive economy class passengers, older passengers, and business travellers whose corporate travel programmes don’t permit an upgrade to business class.

The crucial question is about the seat and how it fits into the gap between increasingly spacious business class seating and the space optimisation of economy. Airbus’s vice president of cabin marketing Ingo Wuggetzer calls this the “comfort canyon”, and the growth of premium economy across airlines worldwide makes it clear that airlines are keen to span it.

Currently, Qantas does so on the 787 with a Thompson premium economy seat that seems, so far, to be used exclusively by the airline. It is pitched at a standard 38”, some six inches more than regular economy on the 787. There has, however, been some criticism since its unveiling around the adequacy of available space and that the “midnight clamber” of middle and window seat passengers over their aisle neighbours is not as simple as might be desired.

A big question if Qantas opts for the A350 will be on the layout of premium economy. The Airbus extra-widebody sees premium economy split between the same 2-3- 2 configuration on the Dreamliner, but with correspondingly wider seats, and a relatively unimpressive 2-4-2, similar to that on the wider 777, 747 and A380.

Other seating options for Qantas include a number of similar, large recliner seats, and there are new products that could prove very interesting. The Eclipse seat from HAECO – the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company’s seat-maker arm of Swire Group, parent of Cathay Pacific with which Qantas has seen a notable thawing in relations recently — uses similar staggering to that seen in existing business class seats such as the Safran Optima used in United Polaris class to increase space.

But there are counterpoints to innovation: Air New Zealand’s Spaceseat was not a success for the airline. The aspirations of groundbased demonstration and the realities of in-aircraft space conflicted, with the airline first boosting the amount of pitch on board and later removing the product entirely.

On balance, Qantas seems unlikely to go further than the deep recliner model for premium economy.

AirAsia X has for some years sold an angled lie-flat sloping sleeper seat as “premium flatbed”, but it’s not real competition for Project Sunrise. More recently Air Canada realised that it could not sell former Singapore Airlines sloping sleepers it acquired on used A330s as business and instead classified them as premium economy.

It may well be, eventually, that the descendants of the angled lie- fl at sleepers of the late 1990s and the fully fl at beds of the 2000s become the premium economy of tomorrow, just as they were the business class of 20 years ago, but it seems unlikely that that will happen by the time the Project Sunrise interiors decisions need to be made.

Business class: evolution or revolution? Perhaps a bit of both?

It seems likely that Qantas’ business class will be Thompson Aero Seating’s Vantage XL staggered seat which the airline unveiled as its Business Suite, fi rst for its Airbus A330 and later updated for the 787. Qantas has long prized consistency in product, and it would be a real surprise if it opted for a different seat.

The big question is likely to be whether the Business Suite will actually become a suite: one with doors that is. Thompson offers the Vantage XL+ doored mini-suite as an option, débuted as the Delta ONE Suite on the US airline’s A350 and later 777 fl eets, making it an entirely reasonable option for the two aircraft being considered for Project Sunrise.

Doors are helpful in both making the seats more private and less prone to disturbance by passing travellers. And, following LATAM’s lead in arranging its Vantage XL seats in “honeymoon” centre double-pairs rather than single seats, it also opens up the option of that Holy Grail, the business class double bed.

That the Qantas product on the A330 and 787 is not already a doored suite should probably not read as a guide to the question of doored suites for Project Sunrise.

The narrower cabins of these smaller twinjets mean that the space for doors is limited.

At fi rst glance, fi rst class seems unlikely to appear, given the general trend away from a separate cabin. There is, however, something of a course correction around airlines looking to create super-premium products in the front row of business class cabins, where the lack of overlap with the seat in front means there is extra space which some carriers are interested in continuing to offer as a fi rst class product.

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Would Qantas offer just four fi rst class seats at the front of the business class cabin? It would be complex to provision in terms of soft product, given that creating and carrying an entirely separate set of food, wine and service ware for first class would be a significant fuel cost. But with a determined and thoughtful approach to the passenger experience, it wouldn’t be impossible.

The question of space “beyond the seat” will be crucial

With the demise of the Airbus A380 programme and the contemporaneous increase in the number of A380s being refurbished, airlines are focusing once again on innovation in the “third places” within the aircraft footprint. Without the superjumbo’s nooks, crannies and “forehead” zones, the options for lounges, bars, congregation areas and just space to stretch are limited on the single deck of the 777 or A350.

Enter the underfloor space. It’s a known fact that Project Sunrise will stretch this generation of aircraft to the limits of its range, fuel capacity and maximum takeoff weights, suggesting that cargo (the heavier sort, at least) is unlikely to be a major part of the economics. With extra fuel tanks perhaps taking up some belly room, there may also be space available for passenger use.

That has variously been suggested as dormitory-style bunks akin to those offered during the flying boat era, space for exercise, lounge areas, and more. The major issue here is certification: it is unlikely that these spaces can be used during takeoff and landing, and indeed regulators will need to be persuaded that they can be used safely at all. In their favour, some Airbus A330 and A340 operators already offer downstairs lavatories, which establishes a precedent.

If the underfloor space isn’t an option, then the relatively rectangular area of the main cabin footprint is what’s left. Realistically, that leaves the door areas as the options. Airlines have for some time tried to spruce up the main boarding area with new materials, fabrics and other finishes. Virgin – both Atlantic and Australia – airlines present this as a bar and lounge space, but it occupies seating area, which is not ideal.

Collins Aerospace has something new: the M-Flex duet, swinging out a convertible bar and lounge space in front of the doors during cruise.

It is, says the company, “a revolutionary cabin monument designed to transform a seldom optimised area of the cabin, an aircraft doorway, into a self-serve social zone or cabin attendant working area. M-Flex Duet is an industry first in a flexible premium service area, offering passengers the ability to move about the cabin to grab a beverage or snack. ” Collins explains that “M-Flex Duet utilises the aircraft doorway to offer a premium passenger service and extended galley space.

During taxi, takeoff and landing the compact monuments are stowed meeting all regulatory egress requirements. During flight, the units unfold to stretch across the doorway providing a stand-up, branded and self-serve social area for a passenger to enjoy food and drinks. ” “Traditionally, the space needed to add this type of service area meant sacrificing seating … which could mean an annual revenue loss in the millions per twin-aisle aircraft,” explains Jefferey McKee, Collins Aerospace’s director of Research & Development, Interiors. “Our team has created a brand new concept that benefits both the passenger and the airline . . . with minimal to no seat reductions. ” Notably, M-Flex Duet fits within the standard cabin footprints for this kind of monument, which makes them capable of being offered as both line-fit direct from the factory and as retrofit. Options could vary for business, premium economy and economy: the former could be a staffed bar, while the latter could be a self-service snack zone that doesn’t take up galley space.