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Aviation History
2003
2003 - 0483.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT INTERIORS MICHAEL PHELAN / HAMBURG Boeing and EADS unveil cabin comfort concepts Move aimed at differentiating first-class from latest generation business-class products Boeing and EADS Sogerma Services unveiled concepts aimed at distin guishing elite first class from busi ness class at last week's Aircraft Int eriors Expo in Hamburg, Germany. Sogerma's Bordeaux-based cabin interiors and completion division is developing its "Privacy Space Concept" for ultra-long-range air craft, featuring individual cabins with a seat and table, storage lock ers, entertainment system and even a steam bath. The concept, devel oped with Paris-based aircraft inte rior specialist Pierrejean Design Stu dio, is designed to provide increased product differentiation compared with business- and first-class seats. The cabin's most unusual feature is its hammam-style upright steam bath. Sealed behind a sliding glass door, the passenger is bathed in steam and dried by air jets. Water run off is recycled, so the aircraft's water supply is not affected. Accor ding to Jacques Pierrejean's concept, the seat would be fully dressed with bedding and could be laid flat to SOGERMA PRIVACY SPACE CONCEPT form a full-length sleeping berth. Sogerma believes airlines would only want to put a handful of these private cabins on aircraft. The 2m (80in) cabin length is "no longer than current first-class seat pitch," says Sogerma, and four cabins would fit across an Airbus A340 cross-section. Sogerma insists the design is merely a concept "to promote dis cussions with customers on future long-range cabin arrangements", but points out that it is feasible with today's technology. Boeing, meanwhile, was showing the fruits of its Payloads Concepts Center, a six-person team tasked with designing "female-friendly" aircraft lavatories. The DreamLav concept, which Boeing displayed to customers at the Hamburg show, is a spacious 1.37 x 1.22m cubicle, fea turing a self-cleaning toilet, shelving and toiletry cabinets and "intelli gent" user-cued lighting system. Alan Anderson, Boeing payloads chief engineer, says the concept is "not a product proposal, but a con cept to show what's possible". He says Boeing toilet manufacturers have been shown the design and are investigating the technology required to realise it. Boeing also dis played distinct male/female toilet area layouts designed for the rear of a 777 cabin. EXPANSION Caribbean Star plans St Kitts hub Antigua-based regional Caribbean Star Airlines is moving its headquarters to St Kitts and will develop a new hub on the island as it continues to expand its fleet and network. Over the next three months, the Bombardier Dash 8 operator will move administrative staff to a temporary facility on St Kitts in the north of the Leeward Islands. Within two years, Caribbean Star owner Allen Stanford will invest over $10 million at St Kitts Robert L Bradshaw Airport to establish a new head office as part of a wider expansion effort that includes redevelopment of the airport and creation of a fixed- base operation (FBO) to handle private jets. St Kitts recently granted Caribbean Star authority to fly non-stop flights to St Maarten, a move that enabled the regional to forge a strategic alliance with St Maarten-based Winair. Caribbean Star chief executive Paul Moreira says Caribbean Star-which also serves Anguilla, Antigua and Tortola from St Kitts - envisages operating new ser vices from St Kitts to St Barts and the Dominican Republic, while adding frequencies on current routes. "We want to basically serve the entire northern Caribbean," he says, adding that the carrier will connect with its San Juan-based sister Caribbean Sun in St Kitts and Antigua. AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT North Atlantic ATC capacity set to be boosted Oceanic controllers of the North Atlantic flight information regions (FIR) Gander and Shanwick will be given new equipment to upgrade surveillance quality, communica tions and capacity. UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is to buy Nav Canada's Gander Automated Air Traffic System and the two com panies are to develop the model further for operation at NATS's Shanwick oceanic centre by 2006. The Gander and Shanwick FIRs contain the world's busiest oceanic air routes, handling 325,000 flights a year, according to NATS chief executive Richard Everitt. The air traffic management model Shanwick will install, to be known as the Shanwick Automated Air Traffic System (SAATS), will replace high-frequency voice communica tions with the latest controller- pilot datalinking communications equipment, and the existing com plex bolt-on automatic dependent surveillance (ADS) system with a more easily managed ADS incorpo rating map-based aircraft track dis plays and predictive trajectory planning. The system, says NATS, should enable controllers to more easily allocate best flight profiles to air craft, while "massively" increasing system capacity. NATS says a team of 20 of its engineers and controllers will be working in Ottawa, Canada, with its Nav Canada counterpart to develop the SAATS software. "We'll be taking with us the communica tions technology we have devel oped at Prestwick [and] the result will be a jointly compatible system that fully meets the needs of future air navigation systems now under development," it says. S 4-10 MARCH 2003 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.flightinternational.com
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