As the airline industry shifts to long-haul narrow-bodied operations, both passenger and airline expectations are rising on these smaller aircraft’s premium cabins. One of the most common expectations from airlines is around the ability to mirror the service and passenger experience common to wide-body aircraft.
As result, premium cabins are being equipped with dedicated lie-flat seats with aisle access either utilizing inefficient legacy products or newer products with tighter pitches and more awkward living spaces. The premium zones on single-aisle aircraft often fall short of the widebody standard. In addition, the weight and complexity of these seats make it more challenging for these aircraft to achieve the economic efficiency that they were designed to deliver.
Narrow-bodies have been the workhorse for the airline industry on short and medium-haul flights for decades, but their return to transcontinental routes requires a new way of thinking. The time of applying wide-body principles to a single-aisle proposition is about to end thanks to a new piece of aircraft technology that will change the way the industry thinks about cabin interiors.
A new way of thinking.
We’re not shy of a challenge at Teague, and we’re constantly innovating, that’s why our recent partnership with aerospace manufacturing leader NORDAM is yet another hidden but revolutionary enhancement to ultimately change cabin design forever. Thanks to NORDAM’s focus on innovative, advanced composites and the new Nbrace™ technology, it is now possible to design cabins without the traditional restrictions, allowing multiple three-dimensional fixing points across the cabin including the cabin walls.
It might not sound like a huge impact at first, but with this new clean slate now being offered to designers in single-aisle aircraft, we spent several months throwing out the existing rule book to explore the possibilities, resulting in the creation of a new seating concept dubbed Elevate.