Premium Real Estate: How Seating Innovations Alter Cabin-Space Economies
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APEX Insight: Seating layout becomes a game of musical chairs when fully flat-bed seats are added to the mix.
LOPA, an industry acronym for “layout of passenger accommodation,” more commonly referred to as seat configuration, helps airlines maximize cabin real estate and compete on passenger experience. Over the past 20 years, designers have been arranging and rearranging the seats at the front of the airplane and experimenting with various layouts. What started all the shuffling was British Airways’ introduction of lie-flat seating in 2000: The larger footprint of a lie-flat seat suddenly altered cabin-space economies.
Pitch Perfect
According to Aysegül Durak, Turkish Airlines’ chief engineer of Cabin Interior, a fully flat bed needs a minimum seat pitch of 76 inches, while a standard economy seat requires 31 to 33 inches. And if you consider the 50-percent seat loss in cabin width, that’s “three to four times the space of an economy seat,” Durak says. Configurations that came after British Airways’ original forward-aft pair model, such as herringbone and reverse herringbone, had angled seats and used hollow spaces (for footwells) to offer lie-flat comfort without decreasing passenger capacity as much.
But because airlines operate different aircraft, and have different service models, determining the ideal LOPA for a new interiors program is not straightforward. It depends on aircraft type, width of cabin and distance between the first and second doors. During this stage, airlines are looking for optimum comfort and maximizing passenger capacity.
Sometimes it’s about the numbers, says Daniel Baron, CEO of LIFT Strategic Design, a Tokyo-based studio specializing in airline brand, cabin design and passenger experience development, which has worked on programs for Philippine Airlines, Skymark, HK Express and China Airlines. “[Management] say to their staff: ‘We need X number of fully flat seats in business class, Y number of seats in economy,’ even if it means cutting galley stowage or closets.”
Who Sits Here?
Surveys by Turkish Airlines suggest passengers prefer forward-facing seats, but still find angled, staggered or nested seats acceptable as long as they have a fully flat bed and don’t feel confined. These preferences are often cultural, Baron says. “Japanese business travelers want high walls and do not want to see the faces of others, so a yin-yang [forward-aft] configuration is probably out of the question. Others prefer less privacy. And for some, being seen in business class is a mark of social status.”
“Mistakes are too expensive.” €” Daniel Baron, LIFT Strategic Design
Service models also play an important role in seat configurations. “In Asia and the Middle East, the ability for the cabin crew to easily assist customers with table deployment, bed making and placement of service items also comes into play,” Baron says. “In all of my projects, a considerable amount of time is spent discussing such issues, as mistakes are too expensive.”
Thinking From the Belly
As market dynamics change, designers are exploring new ways to earn revenue from the aircraft belly. “Each centimeter in horizontal plane is already in use, while the vertical space could be reclaimed by new seating concepts,” Durak says. Her idea is to move everything but the seats to the lower deck – stowage, galleys, perhaps even lavatories – and use the extra space to increase seat numbers, or create common areas such as exercise corners or rented bunks for hourly use.
“Each centimeter in horizontal plane is already in use, while the vertical space could be reclaimed by new seating concepts.” €” Aysegül Durak, Turkish Airlines
PriestmanGoode, which has worked on cabin programs for Air France, Qatar Airways and South African Airways, is also probing for solutions in the belly of the aircraft. “What we’re looking at is how we can make use of underutilized spaces, such as below-deck areas, to free up galley space on the main deck, or create special experiences,” says Luke Hawes, designer and director at the London-based design consultancy.
Currently, almost all commercial aircraft fly 50 to 70 percent empty in the cargo hold, Durak says. “Newly designed aircraft might have lowered floor levels, which will enable two-tier rows to be the new standard.” While there have been some certification concerns regarding the load weight of stacked rows, Baron believes material innovations will ultimately address these. “With the advent of lighter and strong materials, this will definitely happen,” he says.
Will It Blend?
Considerations of pitch, capacity and passenger preference have led to LOPAs that borrow from the hotel industry and do away with traditional cabin class structures airlines have used as their sales model. Seymourpowell has proposed a first-class cabin with blended seating, which would see passengers booking a single or double room in lieu of a seat. And a concept proposed by Formation Design Group intersperses pairs of single lie-flat seats with suites.
Formation suggests this layout would offer a 43 percent higher lie-flat seat count over existing staggered and herringbone LOPAs, a 36 percent higher lie-flat seat count over nested “V” or parallel 2-2-2 cabins and over 50 percent more combined usable bed surface area. In a face-to-face configuration, seats could do double duty as work areas for business passengers traveling together.
What we’re looking at is how we can make use of underutilized spaces.” €” Luke Hawes, PriestmanGoode
But would blended cabins generate envy among passengers with a view of others in better accommodations? Bob Henshaw, a partner at Formation, believes that just as travelers are aware that hotels offer various types of rooms, blended cabins can be more aspirational than antagonistic.
“When you [compare] economy with lie-flat seats, there’s such a giant chasm of comfort that it makes people mad,” Henshaw says. “But if you’re in a premium cabin, and you are in a lie-flat seat, and there’s a suite that’s got a bigger bed, I don’t think it’s going to be that much of a conflict.”
Moving Parts
As premium cabins establish common areas such as bars and lounges, LOPA innovations are also considering activities other than sitting or sleeping. “These have been particularly useful marketing tools and work very well for groups of passengers traveling together,” Hawes says, “as it provides a comfortable place for passengers to socialize during the flight.”
Zodiac Aerospace’s Lifestyle Cabin concept presented in 2016 features different zones for activity or privacy, sleeping berths, lounges for eating and drinking, self-service catering – even private apartments – all made possible by maximizing the vertical and horizontal space in the aircraft. Another concept is Transpose, by Airbus’ Silicon Valley innovations lab A3, which would see cabin modules with seating, play zones or bars being swapped the way cargo containers are loaded and unloaded, offering airlines the flexibility to customize their cabins according to the needs of a particular flight.
The logistics-intensive process of reinventing the LOPA makes doing so often costly, slowing innovation in seat configurations. There is a degree of fear of going too far beyond the norm, getting it wrong and having cabins fly empty. In fact, this is what makes the initial introduction of lie-flat seating almost two decades ago so remarkable.
When British Airways took a bet on a seat with such a variable cabin footprint, there was every chance it might not have sold. History has shown business travelers appreciate arriving at their destinations better rested, and innovation in this section of the cabin has since flourished. But these are the chances airlines take maybe once in a generation.
“Premium Real Estate” was originally published in the 7.2 April/May issue of APEX Experience magazine.