Pie in the Skynest?

As economy class seats get smaller, the notional demand has grown — but nobody knows how to sell it and how much people will think it’s worth. Air New Zealand, with its Economy Skynest prototype, is hoping to find out. 

The Economy Skynest prototype, with emphasis on the prototype, looks to be a set of bunks around the size that you’d see in the lowest class of a railway sleeper train: an LED-lit version of European couchette, Chinese hard sleeper or Russian platskartny tri-level bunks. 

(This is not, to be clear, the Airbus-Safran lower deck bunk concept that has been circulating around the edges of Project Sunrise for the last year or two: it’s something entirely different.) 

Air New Zealand has mocked up Economy Skynest in the airline’s Hangar 22 Auckland innovation centre, and from the looks of the backdrop the idea is to have it sitting at the back of a middle section of three seats of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, in a spot that is currently either a set of lavatories or the galley kitchen. 

That’s one of the interesting questions about the concept: these are spots that are both noisy and smelly. I for one am not entirely certain that bunking down next to the kitchen or the loo will deliver a great experience. 

“The exact positioning of the Economy Skynest within the aircraft has still to be confirmed,” says Air NZ, noting that “it will be in the Economy cabin”. 

This ambiguity (among numerous others) rather raises the question of how serious an endeavour Skynest is. There are additional, even more serious, questions as to how this kind of product will be certified, and the absence of any kind of visible restraint system ticks that needle further away from concreteness. 

Ambiguity is also present around their size, which the airline cites “in excess of 58cm” in width at the shoulders and “in excess of 200cm” in length. The bunks taper significantly towards their feet, which diminishes their usefulness: it looks rather like passengers would be able to sleep only on one side, whichever has their knees out into space, rather than the other way around. 

In addition, “we are exploring other features such as a separate reading light, personal device USB outlet and ventilation outlet,” says Air New Zealand, and that will have interiors engineers’ alarm bells ringing: power and air are hugely complicated systems that require a substantial amount of certification even on relatively conventional products. 

Another big question is around pricing, which seems somewhat insurmountable. 

An Air NZ ticket for the 15-hour flight from Auckland to Chicago comes in at over $1,500 at its cheapest. If you have to take out some nine seats to make six bunks, that means you need to replace the revenue of roughly $13,500, or about $2,250 per bunk per flight. 

Thinking positively, during the 15-hour flight, each bunk could perhaps be used for 12 of those, so let’s assume three four-hour sleeping shifts. That’s $750 for four hours’ sleep. 

Is that worth it? I guess we’ll see as Air NZ delves deeper. It’s certainly interesting to think about. It’s even more interesting given that it would only be relevant on properly long flights: not so much on tag hops from Auckland to Sydney here, it wouldn’t seem. 

To its credit, Air New Zealand has form on focusing its passenger experience on the long-haul. Its current Business Premier seat, the first ever business class herringbone, was released in 2003 by Virgin Atlantic for its Upper Class and licensed to the Kiwi carrier a few years later. Fundamentally, the strengths in this seat are for long-haul sleep, where the flipover surface creates a comfortable bed, but the trade-off is comfort and space in seat mode. 

(The counterexample to this strength is the 2010 premium economy Spaceseat, another Hangar 22 invention, which was pitched at a pleasing distance there but squeezed far too tight on the actual aircraft, and had to be spaced out further, ruining its economics and leading to its replacement with a more traditional form of premium economy.) 

The big question is whether the Skynest is a pie-in-the-sky marketing gimmick. Even if it is, though, the airline wins anyway, much as Qantas does with the talk of gyms and bunks on Project Sunrise. 

Even if Air New Zealand turns around, eventually, and mournfully regrets that certification, economic or another reality means that it is prevented from offering the Skynest – think about how much publicity the airline will have gained from the exercise in the meantime.