Enter any single-aisle aircraft through the front door and you usually see a lavatory on the left-hand side to the cockpit entrance and a galley to the right of it.
But with partners including Airbus and the Hamburg University of Technology, Diehl has studied how the space directly behind the flight deck could be used more flexibly.
The team has built a combined galley and lavatory unit that can be installed on the starboard side, leaving the port side free for other purposes.
Harald Mehring, Diehl’s chief customer officer, says that space could serve as a passenger welcome area, bar, self-catering zone, display window for inflight shopping products or small crew rest area – especially as new-generation single-aisle aircraft are set to be deployed certain long-haul routes.
A further advantage of combining the galley and lavatory in a single unit is that the aircraft can be configured with fittings for electricity, water and waste water on just one side, rather than both sides of the cabin.
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Diehl admits that the galley – which is installed along, rather than perpendicular to the aircraft’s longitudinal axis – is smaller than in a conventional layout, having space only for half-size instead of full-size service trolleys. But the manufacturer estimates that the new galley concept would cater for service requirements of 80% of single-aisle operators, and an additional dry galley for trolleys and inserts could be installed on the port side if required.
No customer has yet been secured for the concept. Airbus is discussing its application with customers, Diehl says.
Mehring says the concept could be adopted for Airbus’s "Airspace" cabin interior, which is to be introduced on A320-family jets in 2020. But he says that a single customer will be "not enough" to justify a relatively high investment required to change the aircraft’s electricity and water systems for the layout.
As a result, he foresees that the redesigned front space might rather be adopted for a clean-sheet single-aisle aircraft, or Boeing’s projected New Mid-market Airplane (NMA).
Diehl estimates it will require two years to develop the existing demonstrator monument to a standard for serial production.
Source: Flight Daily News
