The Up Front

The Chain is a free-to-listen business intelligence series, produced in partnership with SIMONA Boltaron, connecting the voices and perspectives that shape aircraft interiors. Your host: The Up Front’s editor in chief, John Walton. Visit your personalised podcast hub to pull every episode onto your own device.

The Up Front understands that United Airlines’ Elevate Ascent suites on its latest Boeing 787-9 aircraft are soon to start being unlocked and available for passengers to use within the next month. Like many a door on a recently delivered seat in a recently delivered aircraft, especially those where certification via the FAA as regulatory authority is concerned, United’s Ascent seats have been flying since launch with their doors locked in the open position.

Aviation needs to become more sustainable, as swiftly as possible, and a key part of this work is reducing the environmental impact within the cabin. From lighter weight seats and structures, to recyclable materials, to reducing the amount of water the aircraft needs to carry, every kilogram adds up to an aircraft potentially tonnes lighter… and needing to burn less fuel.

Can longhaul narrowbody business class be just as good for passengers as its widebody equivalent? It’s one of the fundamental challenges of the seats, cabins, and passenger experiences industry — for the last decade, this decade, and the decade to come. There are inherent problems posed by the 3D geometry of the space onboard an A321neo or 737 MAX cabin, and solving them has proven difficult for seatmakers across the board.

The Chain is a free-to-listen business intelligence series, produced in partnership with SIMONA Boltaron, connecting the voices and perspectives that shape aircraft interiors. Your host: The Up Front’s editor in chief, John Walton. John Walton: I’m The Up Front's editor-in-chief, John Walton, and today I am joined by… Christopher Eyser: Christopher Eyser, from Lufthansa Technik. John Walton: And also by… John Inman: John Inman from Simona Boltaron. John Walton: What a show! What a show we've had.

If you were at the Aircraft Interiors Expo this year you might remember that Lufthansa was badly hit by strikes, the result of its seemingly unquenchable thirst for creating and then destroying subsidiaries whose staff have cheaper salaries, and thus worse terms and conditions, than Lufthansa mainline.

The Up Front Readout Business Readout: RedCabin intel, KLM A350 business seat delays, why there’s no ‘I’ in ‘ITCM’, the Lufthansa (Group) Mentality, and more Plus: hot topics from the Aircraft Cabin Innovation Summit, sharing the supply chain limelight, what next as accessibility requirements become mainstreamed… and the latest plans for certifying those final three Allegris 787 business class seats

MONTRÉAL — As the longer-range versions of the Airbus A321neo — including the A321LR and now especially the XLR — fit into a growing number of airlines’ fleets, the cabin balance between the seats up front and the seats down back is telling. Assumptions about the cabins, and indeed the missions, of these aircraft are evolving as more of them arrive. Some airlines like United are dedicating their premium versions to specific routes.

Making cabins, seats and the passenger experience more accessible isn’t just the right thing to do: it’s increasingly mandated by governments and their regulators. The industry is making progress, with numerous impressive products breaking cover or returning to AIX this year — plus upcoming discussions and roundtables at the RedCabin summit this week.

Hello readers — John here, and I’m delighted to bring you our RedCabin reading list. We’re excited for the summit, pleased to be RedCabin media partners, and looking forward to seeing so many of you next week in Germany. Keep an eye out for our special pre-RedCabin podcast episode coming out this weekend, featuring accessibility advocate Mary Doyle, who will be speaking at RedCabin this coming week.