How's Your Flight?

Cabin experience is an exciting and innovative area—perhaps because it particularly takes imagination of how cabin design could look like to solve so many challenges.

Airlines are under pressure to drive cost down and boost capacity while improving their share of the lucrative first- and business-class passenger groups. The trend for the likes of the big carriers is to adopt more advanced and luxurious options for upmarket passengers. To serve the other end of the spectrum with ongoing demand for low-cost air travel, airlines are focusing on the clever use of space and weight distribution to accommodate extra seating.

How flying is evolving depends on the economics of air travel, the passengers’ perspectives and the imagination of the solution providers.

In this post, I wish to look at the top 5 trends in commercial aircraft cabin that are driving the experience—not just of the wealthiest passengers who are enjoying apartments in the sky, but also of others who are complaining of feeling like tinned sardines.

Economy Class: Density as a new seating efficiency

Airlines are eager to make the most of potential revenue space on their planes. That hints at how space savings from thinner seats and innovative designs are likely to be used in economy: not to provide more legroom but instead to pack in an extra row or a few more seats. 

Distraction drives emotional comfort in crowded cabin 

As air travellers dread crowded cabins—especially in Economy, airlines are drawing the passenger’s attention away from the pain of the density. Technology now takes centre stage in cabin experience as in-flight WiFi, in-flight entertainment, mood lighting and virtual reality offer passengers emotional comfort, or at least distraction. 

Premium Economy as a new normal 

As the airlines are cutting every corner to keep down the cost of economy class tickets, and at the same time boosting business class to court cashed-up travellers, there’s a growing gap between the pointy end of the plane and the back of the bus. That results in the introduction of an “in-between category” called Premium Economy, which offers a significant upgrade from the economy experience without the high price of a business class fare. 

For the Premium Economy to sell, the challenge for airlines and other solution providers is to make downgraders from business and upgraders from economy be adequately tempted with visible advantages to make the trade-off vis-à-vis the cost.

Business seats turn into sophisticated personal accommodation 

The 2010s have seen a lot of changes in business class. It can provide the same or a better level of comfort than that available in the first-class cabin less than a decade ago. For a start, today’s minimum requirement is a business seat that can extend into a fully flat bed. The result is that business seats are turning into areas of personal accommodation to give passengers more space, more comfort and a better quality experience. 

The skies of the privileged few 

When the concept of everyone can fly is spreading across the global aviation industry, it creates a phenomenon called aviation nostalgia when flying was such an exclusive experience, and many could not enjoy it. In other words, because it was once an experience reserved for the privileged few, there was an immediate association with luxury that today’s more democratic aviation landscape cannot match. 

Airlines are bringing back the glamour of flying. Today’s first class suite like the Etihad Residence has already blown our mind. So imagine tomorrow’s luxury flying experience? Perhaps the answer is to think of the impossible—for it will be possible tomorrow.

Check out other LinkedIn posts on airlines by Phu Nguyen: 

• Airline Leaders On Keeping Up With Millennials
• Leadership Insights for Budget Airlines' Growth in Asia
• "Sorry, I'm Also A Victim"

About: Phu Nguyen is the conference manager of the Aviation Festival Asia series. She creates content and connects leaders from full-service airlines, low-cost carriers and airports across APAC and beyond.