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Aircraft Builders Try to Take Some of the Ordeal Out of Flying
Kenneth Price of Boeing sits in a mock-up of a Dreamliner cabin, left. Airlines may never buy some of the features offered for the super-jumbo jet, shown above in a computer-generated rendering.
(Boeing)
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Price said the improvements will not only be standard on the Dreamliner but also are likely to be on next generation of Boeing aircraft.
Airbus will make many of the same features -- such as better cabin pressure and humidity -- standard on its A350 XWB, a competitor to the Dreamliner that could enter service by 2012.
Boeing is testing ways to use lights to give the appearance of more space on board. Melanie Kimsey, a Boeing design engineer, recently studied Las Vegas productions such as Cirque du Soleil to understand how its shows use lighting.
"We wanted to see what techniques and tricks they use and see if any of those can be scaled down to work on an airplane," Kimsey said.
Boeing and Airbus already offer airlines better lighting on some jets and plan to make such features standard on the Dreamliner and A350 XWB. The new lights won't be as harsh as current ones and will be easier to dim and brighten, the manufacturers say.
Airbus intends to take that idea a step further by offering the airlines the option of projecting images of the sky and nature on the ceiling of first- and business-class cabins of the A350 XWB, said Sophie Pendaries, director of payload accommodations at Airbus.
"When you are on an aircraft, you are in a small space compared to what is outside," Pendaries said. "We want to bring the space outside into the aircraft."
Some proposed features will probably never appear on commercial jets.
Take Boeing's in-flight shower, for example. The device shoots a fine mist of water on passengers. Airlines have expressed little interest in the shower, which would take up valuable space on planes, Boeing concedes.
Another idea that Boeing has floated is to turn vast attic space on the next model of its jumbo 747 into lounges or bunk areas. But airlines haven't expressed much enthusiasm for that, either. They seem more interested in how to use the space for galley carts and kitchens, which would allow them to add a dozen seats to the main cabin.
Airlines have expressed similar reservations about Airbus's plans to offer lounges and duty-free shops on its super-jumbo A380 aircraft. But that hasn't stopped engineers at Airbus and Boeing from dreaming up other ways to ease the burden on passengers. Kimsey said she thinks such efforts have direct impact on her company's bottom line.
"Everybody benefits from happy passengers," Kimsey said. "The happier passengers are, the more they will fly. The more they will fly, the more planes the airlines will buy."
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
