Certification issues remain as one of the primary areas of concern throughout the aircraft cabin and passenger experience industry. Seat delays in first, business, premium economy and economy classes are all too visible, and all too impactful to getting aircraft delivered and in service.
With business class offering the most variety of seats — in terms of orientation, layout, function, operation, customisation, and novelty of approach — it should be no surprise that design, certification, and production within this cabin is currently a major focus within the industry.
But the certification issues go well beyond business class, affecting everything from enormous floor-to-almost-ceiling first class suites to the slimmest of 28-inch-pitched barebones slimline economy seats.
Compounding the issue, many of the problems the industry is encountering are also specific to individual regulators, with approaches taken by regulators often creating problems that seem to lack a real safety justification for their effects.
Whether it’s the FAA treating requiring different testing for doors installed as linefit or retrofit, EASA’s ongoing understaffing issues — or the UK CAA’s duplicatory gold-plating of regulation driving multiple UK-based seatmakers to seriously consider relocating their activities to the EU — certification was the very much the biggest problem under discussion at this year’s Aircraft Interiors Expo.
Our in-depth reporting here draws on a wide variety of one-on-one discussions and roundtable meetings with industry experts from across the airline seat and cabin supply chain — before, during and after AIX.
Given reasonable concerns about the potential consequences of being identified as publicly criticising a regulator or regulators, we agreed to these discussions being unattributed: in effect, the Chatham House Rule, which “helps create a trusted environment to understand and resolve complex problems. Its guiding spirit is: share the information you receive, but do not reveal the identity of who said it”.
In a few specific cases where to discuss a specific issue that a specific airframer, supplier or seatmaker is having would identify them, we have summarised or grouped them together.
