RedCabin Aircraft Cabin Innovation Summit Insights
RedCabin hosted its Aircraft Cabin Innovation Summit this December in Dublin, where our Regional Sales Manager, Lynn Benham, attended her first RedCabin event to gain insights into the latest developments within the aircraft interiors industry. Here are Lynn’s key thoughts:
Event Overview
The RedCabin event two days packed with conferences and workshops, followed by a final day dedicated to a tour or a talk by the host. Attendees included designers, suppliers, OEMs, and airline representatives. The goal is to deliver an event that encourages dialogue, providing a platform for open discussions about the current state of the industry and potential future developments.
This was the first event to be held in Ireland and hosted by an aircraft lessor, Avolon.
Key Themes
The agenda was packed with a broad range of interesting topics, from business class seating design to women in aviation to passenger experience possibilities.
Avolon’s speakers highlighted the current challenges faced by lessors, including supply chain disruptions — an issue well recognised in the room — and increased leasing durations from airlines. They also noted a shift away from comprehensive embedded aircraft branding. Now there is greater emphasis on lightly branding easily interchangeable products, like antimacassars.
Passenger experience was also a hot topic from several angles. Firstly, seating manufacturers discussed how they are designing business class seats with innovative features, such as a fewer moving parts for less maintenance and integrating other experiences to enhance the journey, such as temperature control and improved IFE options.
A related trend from OEM and airlines discussed was increasingly removing galley, bar and lavatory areas from twin aisles and adding more business class seating instead, as this offers more revenue opportunity.
Missing from conversation
Throughout the event, there were engaging and insightful discussions, predominantly focused on business class and twin-aisle aircraft. Coverage of single-aisle and economy options was very limited, with conversations primarily driven by designers and suppliers. This was partly due to increasing number of passengers selecting Business Class due to a perceived decline in Economy offerings, and that interest in alternative options, such as Premium Economy, is growing, partly influenced by social media trends.
To facilitate a more comprehensive dialogue on these topics, involving a broader representation of airline perspectives would have been even more beneficial.
Overall, it was a well organised and insightful event with lots of exciting developments for the future. We look forward to continuing to learn from the wider industry and contributing to the innovation journey of aircraft interiors.