The Butterfly Seat – Examining the Advancements

The Butterfly Seat has been a concept that has been going around the past few years – with the ability for a pair of seats to act as three things:

• A premium Economy seat, seating two people
• A business class seat, seating one person
• A business class bed

Butterfly Seat concept shown at the Airbus booth, 2017

There were previous demonstrations of it at Airbus last year.

This year, it moved to a new vendor Tapis Corporation, as Paperclip Design have been working on improving the design.

The Butterfly Seat with Tapis leathers

 
With the window seat turned into a bed/rest area

AS two business seat. Note the divider – it can go up in a clever design move

As a full divider.

With the changes in design, there were issues with the weight and the complexity of the design. As a result, the design has been simplified a lot.

The seat now uses a 3-point seatbelt, with the belt across the chest to be used in takeoff and landing, with a standard two-point lap-belt at the rest of the time.

The seat itself is wider than in previous demonstration, with a 75” bed in total, finished in Tapis Corporations Ultrasuede

The seat in full bed mode

The butterfly seat is one that has interested me – namely as it would allow you to deliver a possible five class system in a narrow body aircraft, with the flexibility to change at will with two types of seat installed into the cabin

Five Class? Well. 3 classes and 5 fare subsets.Take the following example:

• 1 to 2 rows of bed seats using the butterfly seat (one person per seatset)
• 1 to 2 rows of premium economy seat using the butterfly seat (two persons per seatset)
• 6-8 rows of extra space economy
• A majority of normal space economy seats
• A few rows of cheap economy seats with compromised legroom

This model in some respects is out there already (think American Airlines A321 used on transcon – which holds four classes using three seat types).

There remains a lot of flexibility in this end of the market, and designs like the Paperclip Butterfly seat a concept that airlines should be thinking about in terms of how they could reduce differing equipment types on a plane, and how to market it

With convertibility options, it offers a fascinating idea of how to re-think a three class product in the air.

Thanks to Jamie Lee of Paperclip Design who walked me through the updated seat at Aircraft Interiors Expo and Tapis Corporation for hosting.

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