At the Crystal Cabin Awards, Airbus and Safran won the award for Cabin Concepts Award for its Lower Deck Passenger Experience Modules.
I covered this in a bit of depth last year at Aircraft Interiors Expo when this launched. In the meantime, both Airbus and Safran have been doing some of the commercial work to make this concept fly.
The Demo Moduble
Internal Modules – Rendering Airbus.
I covered this in a bit of depth last year at Aircraft Interiors Expo when this launched. In the meantime, both Airbus and Safran have been doing some of the commercial work to make this concept fly.
In fact, at the awards show there was a strong showing of support for airlines to bring this concept into the real world.
But something like this has issues.
Whilst the product is on target to 2021 launch, there are still some regulatory hurdles overcome as well as the design work to make a product work like this.
In terms of support, with an extra €600 per bunk possible – it could be very attractive versus a premium economy seat – but instead to have an economy seat on the main deck, and a bunk on the lower deck on can sleep into after take off. Such an environment would require additional crew to support the safety management of the system. Safran is working with the authorities to avoid this according to Runway Girl Network – but that could be a tough sell.
It would be a major differentiator to airlines, who in theory could swap in and out these modules between flight – selecting them for a payload heavy flight vs a passenger experience type flight (for example, during the off-season when underbelly loads are quieter, it may be easier to deploy this and make money on it.
However, this could also lead to internal competition between an airline passenger and cargo divisions (depending on how the airline is structured) – remember some flights only go because of the underbelly cargo which is underneath, with the passenger load almost inconsequential
And yes – whilst its available is an option for the A330 family first (as line or retrofit), it’s going to take a brave airline to deploy this.. as well as some rather interesting plans one can hope
There’s a lot of development to go from this concept to reality – and one I intend to keep an eye on.
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