The Aircraft Interiors Show in Hamburg is the place where engineering meets art. Alan Peaford rounds up the key takeaways from the show.

An interactive tunnel at the show demonstrated how deconstructionism can provide a much more personalised passenger experience, and provided a gateway into the event, exploring the future of the aircraft cabin.

Life was imitating art inside the show where technology specialist Lufthansa Consulting was demonstrating how their people are the ‘hidden’ driver behind so much of the technology on aircraft by neatly camouflaging staff members.

New technology was prevalent at this, the world’s largest event for passenger experience. Panasonic unveiled ARC a moving map that does so much more

Connected experience

The “Connected Experience” has been a buzzword at cabin events for a while and European manufacturer Airbus announced its pioneering Internet of Things in the aircraft cabin, is now moving from concept phase to reality.

The platform links the ‘connected’  galleys, meal trolleys, seats and overhead bins in real time, to provide data to the crew and also to the cloud for subsequent trend analytics.

There was a massive interest in wellness and wellbeing at the show.

Supermodel Toni Garrn is the co-founder of JetLite which announced a partnership with Recaro to blend its individualised human-centric lighting into business class seats to support the circadian rhythm and reduce the effect of jetlag.

And it was not just lighting that was in the spotlight, but also taste and smell featured, with vitamins and dissolvable tablets that sort out your blood for ultra longs flights and Fokker’s innovative scent system.

Seating                

UK seat manufacturer ACRO introduced its six-series seat for the tightest of seat-pitches aimed at the low-cost economy market. It’s a slightly wider centre seat, and the novel frame design and curves of the seatback make the “worst seat on the plane” more bearable

Northern Ireland’s Pitch saw its PF3000 selected by Antonov for its AN-148 regional jet

Award-winner, Butterfly seating, unveiled an innovative concept for a business class seat for narrow-bodies that can switch from two seats for short regional flights into a single lie flat suite for longer flights. The transformation takes less than 10 seconds.

Look out for a new seat coming in the future. With a great automotive heritage, Formula1’s Williams Engineering has teamed up with aerospace designer JPA and is promising an exciting new seat within the next two years.

For the business and corporate market, Starling Aerospace unveiled the latest version of its 360-degree track and swivel seat.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter