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Aviation History
1998
1998 - 3204.PDF
AIRCRAFT INTERIORS Cabin confinement Extremely long range flights are going to force airlines to review cabin design DAVID LEARMOUNT/LONDON LONG-HAUL AIRLINE passengers who think they have suffered enough are wrong. Soon they will be faced with flights even longer than the nonstop 14h mara thons from Singapore to northern Europe. So far, despite ever-longer journeys, airlines still give their passengers much the same kind of cabin, seats and lavatories that diey always did. The only radical change has been to in-flight entertainment, but that remains a seat-based activity in almost all airlines. The experience which passengers are compelled to endure is, in many respects, die exact opposite of all that is good for the physical and mental health of human beings. A person who regularly slumps in front of the television for 5h with a six-pack of beer and a delivered pizza is warned by medical gurus everywhere that physical inactivity is bad for the health, mental passivity bad for the brain, and alcohol is bad for both. Yet airlines already pre sent passengers with a similar environment and condemn them to it for 14h. Soon, however, the journey will be 16h or even 18h and, instead of the pizza and six-pack in a relatively spacious living room, the immo bilised passengers are confronted with three meals delivered to the seat, plus alcohol on demand, at 8,000ft (2,400m) cabin altitude, breathing dehumidified air with, possibly, above average carbon dioxide levels It therefore looks like more than a coinci dence mat all the major airlines eidier carry, or are studying, impressive satellite-linked medical diagnostic equipment. Meanwhile, defibrilla tors (which deliver electric shock to the heart in cardiac arrest cases) have become standard for all major airlines which operate long journeys. Singapore Airlines, for example, plans non stop flights from its home base to Los Angeles with its already ordered Airbus Industrie A340- 500s. Using the same type, Emirates plans direct westbound flights from Dubai to the US If today's business class (above) is too crowded for 16 motionless hours, tourist class is worse West Coast. The advent of the Boeing 777- 200X, for which there are no firm orders yet, will offer much the same 16,000km (8,650nm) range and length of journey. British Airways is already casting its eye over both products. Despite the horrifying concept of 16h of unbroken confinement, Airbus agrees that pas sengers prefer to make direct journeys, rather than ones broken by a sterile 2h wait at about midnight in an airport transit lounge. Certainly business passengers, or other "high-yield" trav- Virgin is the only A3 40- 500/600 customer so far to "express an interest" in sleeping accommodation ellers, prefer to fly nonstop, which means diat the airlines are likely to be able to charge premi um fares for a higher proportion of the seats, and would be less likely to have to offer dis counts on the remainder. All the airlines planning ultra long haul ser vices concede diat higher time in the aircraft means diat more space will have to be provided for the passengers. BA has just announced that it is to increase by an inch (24mm) die seat pitch in its "World Traveller" tourist class cabins. Meanwhile, passengers seeking discount fares will probably continue, as they often do now, to travel on the multi-sector or hub-and-spoke services to complete the same journey. A higher dian average fare paid per seat, says Airbus, allows die airlines more choice of how they might use die space on board, especially in an aircraft which regularly flies routes that are close to the limits of its range. Not only would the higher yield make traditional marketing options like greater seat pitch a viable option, but the fact that the aircraft, on extreme range routes, will fly with its maximum fuel load will mean that it cannot carry much, if any, cargo at die same time as a full complement of passen gers. This leaves die underfloor space usable for other purposes, which allows the airline greater freedom to use its imagination on leisure or pleasure activities for its passengers. Characteristically, Virgin Adantic, which also happens to be launch customer for die • 42 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 2 - 8 December 1998
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