Daniel Clucas, founder of Studio ID, has developed a new concept for airline economy seats that would help airlines tear them down quickly and rebuild them with improved features.

He aims to make flying in the economy cabin more pleasant for passengers and make aircraft interiors more sustainable. His innovation is one of several that will draw the crowd at next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg.

Only The Seat Structure Remains

Clucas is an experienced aircraft cabin designer who led the design of the expandable ACCESS lavatory and JetBlue’s entire A321neo fleet, including their Mint Suite and Studio products.

With its patent-pending structure, the designer’s Loop Chair allows airlines to swiftly remove various seat elements and build a new seat with fresh components inside the plane.

“The way it’s designed, it’s almost like a naked version of a normal economy seat,” Clucas says. “We wanted to stick to a design that we know should be strong enough but make it in a more modular way.”

All aircraft seating relies on a core metal frame, with cushions, covers, headrests, tray tables, seat pockets, and in-flight entertainment screens fitted around that frame using various fasteners that keep things securely in place. Many seat elements suffer abuse in service and must be replaced throughout the interior program’s lifetime, which can last over a decade. Switching out damaged parts is complicated.

While maintenance technicians can fix some damage on the plane, the space limitations of the cabin only allow for minor repairs. Cabin maintenance cycles require removing all the seats from the aircraft for disassembly, parts replacement, and rebuilding. Then, all the seats must be installed inside the plane again. It’s a time-consuming and expensive process.

Instead, the Loop Chair’s frame could stay on the aircraft indefinitely. Every passenger-facing element, from the seat cushions to the IFE, can be easily removed with mechanical fasteners inside the plane, allowing airlines to upgrade the cabin more frequently.

“A team of mechanics could go on board with a set of new headrests with a new feature and easily take off the old ones and put the new ones on,” Clucas explains. “Suddenly, the airline has an upgraded cabin without waiting until the next refit.”

Current Cabin Upgrades Are Labor-Intensive And Time-Consuming

When an airline decides to add or change a feature to the seat, it has to ground the aircraft long enough for extensive cabin maintenance. How long that takes depends on the size of the plane and the scope of the changes. It can be anywhere from an overnight process to weeks per aircraft.

For example, Emirates has embarked on an ambitious $2 billion program to refurbish its long-haul fleet, coordinated by its in-house engineering team. The program involves changing multiple cabin elements, including seating in all classes on the airline’s Airbus A380s and Boeing
Boeing
777s, and takes 16 days to complete per aircraft.

Though an airline might still need to remove seating for a program like this, leaving room for other improvements to the carpeting and cabin walls, using the Loop Chair concept would shorten the time required to refurbish economy seats in the hangar.

The Loop Chair would work on long-haul aircraft, but Clucas sees a prime market for this type of seating on regional aircraft, which tend to keep their interiors longer.

“To keep that minimal aesthetic and super lightweightness, we feel it’s very suited to the regional carriers where the seats may be in the airframes for 20-30 years anyway,” he says.

More Sustainable Aircraft Seating

Notably, the Loop Chair would also make cabin interior changes more sustainable.

The various foams, fabrics, and plastic components on seats mostly go to landfills because they are too challenging to recycle. The industry has been working towards establishing a circular economy. The Green Cabin Alliance, of which Clucas is a leadership board member, has dedicated itself to bringing together manufacturers, designers, and airlines to find a better way to manage aircraft interiors at the end of their service life.

“The ultimate dream would be true circularity,” Clucas says. This would mean a seat cushion at the end of its service life would return to the original manufacturer for reprocessing into new cushions. “It just keeps all those materials in the value chain and stops the kind of raw materials and down cycling we have now.”

Before it can fly, the Loop Chair concept needs a manufacturer who can undergo the lengthy aircraft seat development and certification process. But Clucas is hopeful of finding a partner for the project.

More Accessible Planes

Another innovation at next week’s AIX, Delta Flight Products, a division of Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines
, will present two seats that let passengers remain in their wheelchairs when flying as well as an accessible lavatory with enough room for an onboard wheelchair and up to two attendants.

The company has revised the original wheelchair seat introduced during AIX last year, intended for a domestic first-class cabin, after gathering feedback from the community of passengers with reduced mobility (PRM). It also worked with other stakeholders to modify the design, including the UK-based consortium AirforAll, comprising PriestmanGoode, Flying Disabled, SWS Certification, and Sunrise Medical.

This year, DFP will also debut a version of the seat designed for wheelchair passengers in Economy Class cabins. The airline would install the seat in the front row of the economy cabin to make boarding and securing the wheelchair to the seat more accessible. It would offer passengers the same comfort and safety as the first-class version.

“Since AIX last year it’s been an exciting few months of collaboration and refinement of the design— and constant engagement with the wheelchair user community,” said Daniel MacInnes, Director of PriestmanGoode. “We’ve listened, and this year, we’re leading the way with a family of seat products and other solutions, all part of a holistic view of the journey and an experience that’s inclusive for all.”

DFP’s accessible forward lavatory concept features a unique door opening located near the boarding door. A fixed panel can be unlatched to fit an onboard wheelchair, ensuring passengers’ privacy. The lavatory has touchless features. Lighting supports persons with low vision or color sensitivity. The company is also exploring options like a “smart mirror” that could close caption PA announcements and display tactile symbols for persons with low or no hearing.

“DFP’s involvement in the PRM seats and accessible lavatory is fundamental to our goal of always working towards improving the passenger experience,” said Rick Salanitri, President of Delta Flight Products. “We look forward to seeing these products through their testing and certification phases, preparing them for aircraft identification and installation, resulting in a more seamless travel journey for the PRM community.”

More Innovations In The Crystal Cabin Awards

The airline industry wants to improve air travel’s mobility and accessibility, ensuring dignity for disabled passengers. Other innovations for this year’s Crystal Cabin Awards, which will be given out during AIX, include Virginia Tech’s Calhoun Honors Discovery Program students’ proposal of their own Wheelchair Space and Securement System (WSSS), which would secure wheelchairs on adaptable economy seats.

Sustainability has its own Crystal Cabin Awards category, with three candidates vying for this year’s prize: RECARO Aircraft Seating’s R Sphere recyclable seat made from sustainable materials, a lightweight ECO Sidewall by Diehl Aviation ECO Sidewall that could help reduce aircraft CO2 emissions, and an onboard water dispenser designed by Safran that might make plastic water bottles obsolete on planes.