It's become a tradition to start the spring season of European aviation with Aircraft Interior EXPO. This year 536 companies from 35 countries presented their products on April 1-3 in Hamburg, in the 35,000 sq.m. Esse exhibition centre.
When you walk into an aircraft you may have no idea about its technical characteristics, age or even model, but you'd be hard pressed not to notice the layout and interior decoration of the airliner. Not infrequently, the interior becomes a major factor determining one's overall impressions about the aircraft.
So what does aircraft interior industry has to offer these days?
Ideas and materials
To be used onboard an aircraft, all interior objects must be made of materials certified by aviation authorities. However, this requirement doesn't imply any practical limitations on customers who wish to redecorate their planes according to personal tastes. The vast majority of companies participating in the EXPO were offering full range of colours for any material imaginable, be that specially treated leather, fabrics, suede, various plastics or expensive wood panelling. As to making furniture and partition frames, manufacturers still rely on cellular panels and composite panes.
One of the advantages of business aviation is an opportunity to design any interior the aircraft owner may desire.
Today having own design studio is one of the main requirements to any aircraft manufacturer. About 50 large and small companies represented at the EXPO were willing to work on interior design for your airplane, and had their own ideas in this area. One of the undisputed leaders was Lufthansa Technik.
Communications and entertainment systems
Satellite phones in business jets became a norm a long time ago. Nowadays people want to have onboard telecommunication equipment allowing to use common cellular phones and providing Internet access. One solution was presented by INMARSAT, based on servers establishing broadband connection with the company's satellite system.
A number of cellular operators offer another way to deal with this problem: by installing miniaturised onboard base stations.
Modern in-flight entertainment systems include on-air TV broadcasting and HDTV, satellite radio, video systems, game consoles and stations.
The potential of on-air TV broadcasting systems was demonstrated by Rockwell Collins and Honeywell, recognised leaders in this field. And though it's still a rather expensive treat, the demand is quite high.
The size of displays installed in aircraft cabins is now limited only by the square footage of the surfaces they are mounted on. Availability of HDTV in standard and wide-screen formats means that now you can have a full-fledged home theatre onboard an airplane. Though so far only large aircraft manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing showed practical examples of such systems. By the way, these companies also presented prototype interiors of А-380 and Boeing 747-8 aircraft.
Meanwhile the vast majority of on-demand audio and video devices presented at the EXPO still were ordinary mainline consumer systems. Several dozens of companies showed how they can integrate them into onboard aircraft networks.
Armchairs, sofas and… toilets
It just happens that passengers spend most of the flight in their seats. Probably that was the reason why aircraft interior companies were so concerned about these objects. Looking at the abundance of forms and stuffing you begin to realise that products by companies such as Sogerma, Recaro, Zodiak have long since went beyond our layman idea of a seat as something soft to sit in. These things look more like some hi-tech devices with a lot of useful functions.
Speaking about the most striking and memorable objects in aircraft interior one can't help mentioning something absolutely necessary for real comfort - and something one simply can't do without. These are lighting details which have evolved from the grand-dad incandescent lamps to modern LEDs, control panels - advanced sensor panels and remote controls replacing mechanical switches. The plethora of such stuff on display at the EXPO was the result of hard work by numerous companies. Even toilet stalls for modern aircraft was the mainline product for several firms participating in the Hamburg show.
Meeting It would be rather unlikely that you meet a Russian oligarch or an Arab sheikh who came over to redecorate the interior of their aircraft at the Hamburg EXPO. That's a job for professionals. The aircraft interior exhibition was certainly a highly specialised event, but even a passing glance gives you an idea of just how large and diverse this industry is.
Vladimir Kodintsev
Photoreport
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