Qantas is being smart about trickling the rollout announcements of the seats aboard its Project Sunrise Airbus A350s, driving the front cabin halo fac.
Designing “third places” for passenger experience will continue to grow in importance, especially with an increasing post-COVID premium leisure market.
Designing “third places” for passenger experience will continue to grow in importance, especially with an increasing post-COVID premium leisure market.
The latter isn’t going anywhere soon, but its sunset
is on
the horizon. And that creates a problem for airlines. For fifty years, they’ve had unique, signature spaces to create halo products: on the Boeing 747 the nose and upper deck, and on the A380 the “forehead” and rear upper deck space.
The shower rooms on the Emirates A380 are in the superjumbo’s “forehead” space. Image: Emirates
The future for now is
single-deck, and it’s a much more efficient future from the point of view of an airline accountant, with the balance tilted in the direction of “space on the plane that can seat paying passengers” versus, well, swanky bars and shower suites.