I'd like to highlight one final video to come out of the recent Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg. In the following clip, Airbus aircraft interiors marketing manager, customer affairs Christophe Cossart shows Flight's Barbara Cockburn a new cutaway 1:120 scale model of its A350 extra-wide body (XWB).
The cutaway model highlights potential interior designs and features a first, business, premium economy and economy cabins. Most interesting to this journalist, however, is Cossart's admission that the aircraft's wider cross section "allows you to have the right comfort for today but also for tomorrow because we know the population is getting taller but also wider so it's very important to be able to have this right level of comfort for tomorrow".
As far as I'm concerned, tomorrow is today. I recently flew on a Boeing 737 and shared a not insignificant part of my economy-class seat with a very nice - very rotund - individual. It made for a rather uncomfortable flight.
When A350 customers consider whether to offer nine-abreast or 10-abreast configurations for economy-class cabins (the above picture showcases the latter), wouldn't it be wonderful if they acknowledged that large swaths of the population are already extra-tall (moi aussie) or extra-wide or both? To view the video, click the PLAY button to the right of the screen.
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