Airlines have been boosting offerings to business travelers because they’re the most profitable customers, but the cost of some of the new seats are reaching up to $500,000, the Wall Street Journal writes.
All the Bells and Whistles
The latest trend in business travel has airline companies spending up to $20 million to outfit a plane, according to the paper. The new seats can be made into lie-flat beds, come with 15-inch displays and have privacy panels to separate the passenger from others, while some of them can be combined into a private mini suite, the Journal writes.
The high cost of each seat is in part due to the growing complexity of its design, which can now be made up of up to 5,000 parts, according to the paper. Each seat has to also undergo a set of rigorous safety tests which are getting increasingly strict, the Journal writes.
And in addition to wear-and-tear tests carried out by robots, some firms, such as Rockwell Collins, like to also work with people — because they “can break things in ways the designers never expected,” Glenn Johnson, director of engineering of airport interiors at Rockwell, tells the paper. All of these costs add up, the Journal writes
Airlines still contract directly with airplane interior manufacturers such as Rockwell or Zodiac Aerospace for everything from seats to lavatories, which then ship the materials to airplane manufacturers such as Boeing Co. and Airbus, according to the paper. But the business of airplane interiors is changing. Rockwell, for example, has tapped into augmented reality to show potential airline clients how a seat would look inside a virtual airplane, the Journal writes.
Commentary on the Wall Street Journal article by Doug Cameron
Posted by: The Wealth Advisor
