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John Walton: Today I'm joined by David Kondo. David, would you please introduce yourself?
David Kondo: Sure. I'm a senior customer experience leader that's been around for a little while — a few different airlines such as Lufthansa Group, Finnair, and most recently Qantas. In the cabin space, I'm probably most known for my work with the Qatar Q Suites and then also leading the full development of the Finnair Air Lounge product.
John Walton: Yeah, I mean, that’s certainly where I first — when we first started talking, was for your your work on the program that became Air Lounge?
David Kondo: That was a fun one — and a long one.
John Walton: Yeah, it sure was. We’re both very old… we were young when that started…
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: So David, so normally this is a bit where I ask all of these supply chain members the same questions. What I want to do with you for this first episode is to talk from the airline perspective and almost set the questions for the rest of the industry in a way. Looking at it as an airline, right?
From the airline perspective, what are the factors that you've take into consideration when you are creating a cabin from the supply chain point of view?
David Kondo: So I think we're looking at, a whole lot of different range of factors, right? Because doing a cabin is probably one of the most complicated things you can do. So I think we're looking at a mix of things like supplier pedigree and their ability to be able to deliver. We're looking for their design sensibility and can they deliver to.
Whatever design vision you come up with you're looking at their past performance, of course. Pricing is very important, of course, commercially, though that can always kind of be negotiated and whatnot. Weight of course is a big one because any weight saving you can get out of it pays off in the long run.
And then also just. Yeah I guess coming back to that pedigree piece is, can they deliver to the quality that you're looking for? So making it from just a pretty rendering to actually delivering it to real life and something that's actually gonna perform in real life in, in the wild.
John Walton: Yeah, it's interesting you're talking about pedigree, because one of my. Sort of background questions for this podcast is we see a lot of new entrants trying to make their way at various points in the supply chain, and yet while a lot of them seem to have great ideas and are supported both financially and with the engineering expertise and industry expertise, it often feels like there's a certain amount of… “No IT director ever got fired for buying an IBM” going around the industry. And listeners can't hear you, but you are smiling and nodding, David.
David Kondo: Yes.
John Walton: So why do you think there is so much of this lean towards incumbents within the chain?
David Kondo: Because I think experience matters in this industry, right? As I mentioned before, it is really important to have that experience and know how to do it. It's a de-risking mechanism. I think that said, we're in a really interesting point in the industry. I think because the supply chain is so constrained that does leave the door open for some of these newer entrances.
So sitting in the airline seat, where there may have been suppliers in the past where I just go, okay, no, that's a pipe dream. We're not gonna entertain that. Given the current situation in the industry you do give it a second thought and go maybe it's worth partnering with these guys and getting something going.
John Walton: So what are some of the common pitfalls that you run into? Not just with seat suppliers, but further down the supply chain, once you're talking about CMF providers and and sub-assembly suppliers and some of the people who sort of supply parts of the tech that make the seat work and so on.
David Kondo: I, I feel like what can go wrong will go wrong in this industry. I, I remember when we were doing the Finanir program it, it was developed during COVID basically. And that, that's why it took so long. 'cause it was heavily hampered for that. But I remember our premium economy seat supplier calling us one day saying, look, we've done all this tooling, but we need to rethink this.
And we're like, okay, where's your tooling? Wuhan.
John Walton: Oh no…
David Kondo: So it had to be redone totally all over again in a, in another location. The list goes on of what, what can go wrong and will go wrong. And I think that's, that comes back to, why experience is just so necessary and in this industry to de-risk the programs as much as possible.
I think the industry is overreacted in a way a bit, I feel. For years we've been seeing the programs moving more and more to the left, right? And the deliverables within a program moving more and more to the left and — I remember when I started out in this industry, the ITCM, which is a kickoff, was literally that.
It was a kickoff. It was: right. what are we trying to do here? What are the ways of working? What are you looking for? It was this, and then you'd get into the program. You go to an ITCM these days and they want a full CMF spec. They want the 3D model from the design agency done and dusted.
Everything's pulled far to the left to try and de-risk everything. It'll be interesting to see if we hopefully correct that a bit because I feel the creativity is a bit stifled that way. I think that's the only way to get like a really good program these days is you have to allow for a lot of extra time, and you need to really carve out an initial time period before you start a program that's dedicated purely to design, concepting, prototyping, and validating design, so that you go to an ITCM ready
I’m the airline guy. So I don't know the ins and outs of manufacturing, but I find it perplexing that a program then goes two, three years and it's you're told like, okay, that's them, you can't touch it anymore. But that's the kind of constant battle you have with the seat suppliers.
John Walton: yeah. And it's, that's a fairly common complain that I hear whenever I talk to airlines.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: that you are freezing this very early and if the overall program for the aircraft gets delayed you can be installing a product that is X number of years out of date
David Kondo: That's never happened…
John Walton: Surely not. Yeah it's fascinating and ITCM, which is the initial technical coordination meeting, if this is not your part of the industry, which is, as David has said is, was, is and was supposed to be the kickoff meeting for a project or a program. Lots of people now having what they're calling like pre-ITCM
David Kondo: Pre-ITCM. Yeah.
John Walton: Which, which at some point that you just had to change the name of the thing. And that might be a helpful move into making it very clear about, is this a, a coordination? Is it actually a technical coordination?
Is it the one where we get everyone on board as suppliers? But at the same time, and correct me if I'm wrong, the suppliers have not all been contracted at that point. I’ve
David Kondo: No.
John Walton: heard stories of people going into ITCMs and we'd love to contribute, but also you haven't signed on the dotted line with us yet.
David Kondo: Exactly.
John Walton: We’re happy to do a bit of thinking work around this on the idea that we might get some work out of it, but also, we've got to, we've got to pay our rent as well.
David Kondo: Yeah, exactly. No, and I've been in similar situations as well where you are doing the deal to the last minute and procurement's trying to do their last bit to squeeze the last bit of the deal and get the best rates for the airlines. In the meantime, all that kind of design magic time that I was talking about just evaporates.
And before you know it, it's like bang, ITCM next week and you gotta hustle and put all together.
John Walton: As you see your sort of asking, of course for flexibility. I can hear all of the groans, screams, gnashing of teeth from folks in the industry who are trying to get designers and airlines to freeze their specification early enough that they can get it properly certified.
In what I think we'd probably agree is a fairly complex certification environment —
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: — right now, especially in the the front of the aircraft. And indeed in, in some cases further back, we've got people trying to certify a bunch of ten-abreast NPS seats who are running into some issues as well.
Do you have sympathy for that?
David Kondo: No I definitely do. I can definitely see it from the seat supplier perspective. I think the certification kind of environment, regulatory environment has totally changed as well. So I think COVID, as much as we all hate about talking about COVID, it did have a huge impact on this industry that we're still feeling.
And suppliers. Lost a lot of resource and talent. And the regulatory environment has changed quite a bit also. So I feel like we're living that still, the reaction of that. And hopefully we're still — we’ll get to an equilibrium at some point, but I feel like we have gone to one extreme end of the spectrum where, everyone seems to be scared to do anything out of the box or anything out of the cert box anyway. They go: we've certified this configuration, we've passed on this hick head injury criteria situation. We don't wanna do any more testing. You can have that and we'll customize for you, but very limited, and you can't touch anything within this range and you can't do anything there.
John Walton: I think we both understand why this has come about, right? And it's, I don't think is, it is where a lot of people would choose to be. I think it's where a lot of people have ended up.
Yeah.
I know pre COVID we were all talking about these like zones of flexible customisation kind of thing. Where, above this point on the seat in a business class seat, right above this point on the seat, you can change the shape by —
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: — x percent and so on. And to an extent that seems to have fallen apart and the seats are all looking the same as the stock version now…
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: Unless you are, unless you're a major enough program that, that you find it interesting enough to change the shape of the seat
David Kondo: yeah, and I mean it's, I was reflecting on it earlier, it's like there, there hasn't been that much exciting happening in our industry, right? If you look at a lot of the recent releases it's like the whole industry has settled on reverse herringbone and staggered.
Basically that's where we're at. If we go back, what, 10 years? Maybe a bit more. When we were all racing to get flat, I remember gonna to AIX and it was like going to a candy store, right? Because you'd see all these weird and wacky configurations and you'd see all these cool different ideas and you'd go to the behind the scenes rooms or the secret rooms or whatever and see all these cool ideas.
You don't really see that anymore, and it seems like the industry's like really settled on, okay, it's reverse herringbone or staggered. Here are your basic options. If you're lucky, you might get a bit of customisation, you might be able to skin it a bit differently, but even that is reserved for the big guys. And the airlines that are doing, true custom bespoke cabin from scratch, it’s almost non-existent these days.
John Walton: I agree with you. That's one of the reasons why in your old Finnair guise I was so intrigued by what you did with that, the first real sofa seat. Minimal movement. Obviously you ended up with a little bit more movement than you would originally have wanted you.
There's a bit more mechanism, quite a bit more
David Kondo: Yes.
John Walton: weight, but whomst amongst us cannot say that about themselves?
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: But no, I it's, that's what I found really fascinating, that an airline like Finnair, which is has always had that sort of real innovative flair and that sort of willingness to do things a little bit differently
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: was one of the ones to say actually, yeah, look, this is the product that we like. We think that we believe in it and we are willing to put our money where our mouth is.
David Kondo: Yeah. And I think the, it takes particular mindset from the leadership and executive management to go for it, right? It, it was a very risky move at the time, but I remember I had full support from the board saying, yeah let's go for it. That was really cool. I think given now where we're at with just the difficulties in getting things certified, the amount of suppliers that are in play, I can see why a lot of airline leaders are now going, oh, I don't really want to risk it.
Just gimme something that works and that'll do.
John Walton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's a couple of interesting programs I'm observing at the moment. But I agree with you that there is a, there was a point, I guess, you know, as I say, as as everyone was really going flat, like that sort of 2005 to 2012 —
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: — or so, right? So by, by then everyone had basically figured out that was gonna be necessary.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: But that point at which, you had the sort of flip over versus recline option, which has now largely been resolved in favor of recline. Though, personally I loved flip over,
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: I conceptually understood the complaints, right? I have toto stand up to put my seat into bed mode.
I'm like, yeah, that's fine, but I'm going to go brush my teeth anyway and change into pyjamas.
David Kondo: And you're sitting for 10 plus hours, so you can stand up.
John Walton: Yeah. Yeah. And I get, there's a point on those sort of really short Virgin Atlantic, eastbound redeye, for where — actually, every minute counts
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: But also i'm gonna stand up and it takes 20 seconds to put the bed into bed mode and then I'll lie down again. It, yeah, it never struck me as so as particularly complicated, but but yeah it is interesting to see that consolidation both in terms of seats and in terms of, I guess, the players within the industry.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: That set of consolidation where you ended up with what is now, and I hope when this is released still is Safran
David Kondo: Yeah. Let's see what's next there. Yes.
John Walton: yeah. The ever changing name of the, of what was Weber, B/E, Rockwell Collins, Collins, Collins of RTX and so on.
And I think it's been really interesting to watch the impact that has in terms of the supply chains that, that come with it. From the airline perspective, I guess, we’ve talked a lot about a lot of the issues that come up, deeper down the supply chain, right?
So maybe not a seat maker, but somebody who supplies a plastic, metal parts, manufactures a subassembly like power or inflight entertainment or something. What are the, I guess, the conversations that they need to be having with airlines and airline design partners to make sure a, that they're on your radar, but b, that they're demonstrating their pedigree to use your own to use your own phrase for it.
So say, look, we are, this is us. We are very keen for work and also, we have the ability to demonstrate our skills and our abilities to deliver for you.
David Kondo: Yeah. Yeah I think it definitely pays to know who's in the game, right? From an airline perspective. 'Cause at the end of the day when you're with a fairly major airline and looking for those kind of volumes that you need for such an airline there's relatively few suppliers in each of those segments.
And I think, the seat suppliers are probably, a lot of their programs, they're, they have their own tender processes that, that pick what, which button am I gonna have or which actuation is gonna be in this program. And they have their tender and selection processes as well.
But from an airline seat, if you know there's particular products that, that you want, then you can help influence that and or build that into the contract to say, oh, actually I really want that in the seat. Or, these guys are doing something cool here. How can we marry that into the product and fuse that in?
I think there's definitely opportunities. Yeah.
John Walton: I guess the question is how do you get in with the, into those discussions with those airlines?
David Kondo: From a supplier perspective, like a tier two, tier three supplier I think it's being active with the airlines and proactively selling and pitching your product. It's tough and I think competing for attention of an airline is difficult, right? I get smashed with emails and tons of offers and stuff.
But if you can demonstrate that your product is really, a great product and has a significant advantage over something else, I think that helps. I think it also helps if you've delivered into another program. Like if your product or whatever you're selling is part of a larger program that's done really well, that, that's obviously an easy way to get attention.
And, we are, we're a pretty insular industry and we, a lot of the airlines, we compare notes and we look at each other. So that's also a good way to get in, I think.
John Walton: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, there's a lot of movement in and around the industry between airlines as well.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: Which I've always found quite interesting. I think we need one of those Who’s Who and Where’s Where…
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: At some point. So one of the things that I'm asking everyone to do is to imagine that they can wave a magic wand and fix one thing about supply chain. Here's your magic wand. Wave it, and what is it that you fix?
David Kondo: I think for me if, sitting in airline perspective, my magic wand would be for more choice and flexibility. And if I unpack that a little bit that's maybe two in one. Like we talked about, there's a lot of consolidation that's gone on in this industry. And so there are relatively few suppliers that can deliver it, the kind of volumes or scale that, that a major airline requires.
And I think that also has stifled some of the innovation and new development in our space. I can't remember the last time going to AIX and being genuinely impressed at something new. It's the last few years has been like, ah. Yeah. Okay. Seen that before, or it's the same thing again.
Or a slightly different variation thereof. I'd definitely welcome more competition and more kind of innovation and new product development in our space. And then the other one is really around customisation. Again, this is maybe an equilibrium back a bit more towards being a bit more open to customisation and not just being like, you can change this color from gray to grayer or, but… Gone are the days I feel where you can literally have a true custom program.
Like, you have to be a major airline to be able to do that. And I've worked with major airlines and even for some of them it can be a struggle to, to get the kind of customisation that you want. Which is really important to, to us as an airline, right? Because if we're flying all these business class customers and we're trying to build a brand and we're trying to differentiate against each other, we want to have a custom cabin product.
We're heading into this, already there, but it's very heavily commoditised industry, right? Like it’s certainly worse down back in the cabin, right? But if I think about the hotel industry you don't go to booking dot com, look at a hotel, and then sort by price and go by the cheapest room, right?
But that's what we do in the airline industry. And to an extent we do it in business class for some, parts of the segment, part of the customer segments as well. They're looking for lie-flat between A and B: what can I get? I think customisation is really the key to differentiation in building a true brand and building brand loyalty.
John Walton: I agree with you and I think that the sort of the hidden discussion that you are uncovering here is that trend towards trying to customise as much visibly as possible with as little under the hood of the seat
And I just I understand why that that, that desire arose, why it came about. Just wonder if this was a red herring and if going down that road meant, actually that meant that we got out of the habit. We lost the ability. We lost the skills. A bunch of folks retired who knew how to do that, and knew how to do that
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: And for airlines that means that you now have fewer levers to pull in making the seat really look and feel your own.
David Kondo: Yeah and I think it's also a large part because the suppliers don't have to offer the customisation, right? Like they've got very full order books, they've got plenty of demand. And so as you've got airline A and B with, similar kind of order numbers and one is willing to go with something that’s pretty ready to go, over someone that's gonna require a lot of engineering hours… It's pretty obvious which one you'd probably prefer as a supplier. I think yeah, probably getting more competition and more supply in will open the door to some of that kind of more innovative stuff coming out.
I think it's also up to some of the bigger airlines to, as they have, probably lead the way and do something that does change the game again. We haven't seen a major breakout innovation in our industry. Like, lie-flat was huge. That kind of changed, that was a step change, where the whole industry go, oh, okay, we need to do something here.
And they did.
John Walton: Yeah.
David Kondo: We're seeing that with doors a little bit, right? Everyone's oh, I gotta have a door.
John Walton: But everyone is also saying it's more oh yeah, I've gotta have a door. It's not like — I, I've talked to a lot of people who have said something reasonably similar. People have defaulted to the door as the solution to the question about privacy.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: And the question about mitigating some of the problems of the staggered layout in particular where if you're immediately adjacent to the aisle, it's a much worse seat than it is if you're immediately adjacent to the window or on the other side of a foot box, essentially.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: And so we defaulted a door, I think after Delta One suites. And so people said, oh yeah, I guess we could make one of
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: Rather than to going back and think, actually hang on, what's the —
David Kondo: What do you actually need? Yeah, because it's it's like a marketing tick box exercise at the moment, isn't it? Like you just have to have one, I feel, even though I find, there's some doors that, that work rather well, and there's some that do absolutely nothing.
[00:21:34] John Walton: I absolutely agree with you. And I think that, as we see more of the sort of higher walled suites in particular, that I have a lot of questions about: actually. okay, if the rest of it is this high, does the door need to be that high? Like do I need a door at all?
[00:21:48] David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: Also, have I solved a lot of the problems that people were perceiving around privacy, without actually managing to, without actually requiring the door.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: I think that some of the initial feedback that we're seeing on the American Airlines, A321 business class, the Collins Aurora people are loving that or hating it.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: And some people are like, this is the most private thing that I've ever flown. It's amazing because those walls are really high.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: The height of the wall, of the A321neo Airspace bin. It makes it feel really —
David Kondo: yeah. We humans like, like to be up against the wall. But yeah. And. Yeah, I think the key thing with doors is it's really around, comes back to privacy. But I think with privacy it's the big part of, it's just not having eye contact.
And so if you can prevent eye contact, that's big part of your battle really, isn't it? If I think back to the Finnair program that doesn't have a door, that was developed at the time where doors were starting to emerge and we, at that time we did actually look at how could we integrate the door?
But we decided that the space was better given to the customer rather than taking up, taking space away from customer just to have a door. But the way the LOPA was done and how the arrangement of the seats was done and how the shell height was done. When you're sitting there, you feel quite secluded 'cause you don't see any other passengers from your seated position.
So it does feel quite private.
John Walton: And I think key to that as well as also the audio scape of it.
The fact that you are surrounded by fabric, and the same fabric.
David Kondo: yep.
John Walton: and so you don't get that sort of echo-y plastic that you still get on quite a lot of
David Kondo: yeah. And it's even on the cabin walls as well. There's this textile there. So it's this cocooning feeling we were trying to make.
John Walton: . No, look you, you know, I enjoy that product. It's very strong. And I think that, it is one of the examples that people hold up and say, look, you can have a private product without
David Kondo: Yeah
Love it or hate it though.
John Walton: yeah. Although I haven't seen a lot of people hating it.
David Kondo: It's mixed. Yeah.
John Walton: Yeah. People love and hate everything, right?
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: right? Like I, I never saw why people had such a problem with looking out the window of the original Virgin Atlantic Upper Class suite.
I'm like, I've got a neck. It works. Now they started putting that on the narrower aircraft —
David Kondo: yeah. And squeezing it up.
John Walton: sure, fair enough
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: But the people were complaining about it on the original, and I was like: it's fine. I'll just turn my neck sideways and look out the window.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: But yeah, it's fascinating because there's been so much evolution in what people want in business class seats and the expectations that passengers have, both in terms of the functionality and in terms of the CMF and in terms of what it looks like and feels like.
David Kondo: Yeah.
John Walton: And if it looks like an old product now, even if often age doesn't have as much to do with it as you would think. It's really fascinating to me and I'm hoping to dive more into that, into the, in the rest of this series
So thank you for joining us to, to give some people a sort of airline perspective on that and to set the questions for the rest of the series
David Kondo: It's been interesting.
John Walton: absolute pleasure. So where can The Up Front’s readers and listeners find you to discuss more if they're interested?
David Kondo: probably the easiest way to get in touch is on LinkedIn, so David Kondo on LinkedIn.
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