Comfort at tipping point, says key Boeing insider

Boeing’s cabin design guru finds it hard to see how airlines can further boost seat density in economy class.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes director of differentiation strategy Blake Emery. Marian Lockhart | Boeing

Boeing’s cabin design guru finds it hard to see how airlines can ­further boost seat density in ­economy class without changes to the structure of aircraft.

Blake Emery emphasises this is his personal view rather than an official company line but as someone who plays a key role in designing the look and feel of Boeing’s impressive modern airline interiors, even his personal observations carry weight.

He believes airlines are getting “pretty close” to the point where manufacturers would have to change structural components such as floor beams if more seats were to be added.

The affable Emery is a qualified psychologist and he is pondering a question about whether anyone has ever determined a point at which people find airline travel becomes so uncomfortable they shy away from flying.

“I have not heard of anybody determining that except in anecdotal data,’’ he says. “You will hear people say ‘never again on such and such an airline because it was just too tight’.

“Now, I can tell you from a psychological standpoint there is definitely a point where you won’t do it any more and that is if you are in a situation where you feel like you are trapped.

“If you feel trapped it actually sets up the fight-flight condition in your brain. It’s actually a mild panic response that’s going on. So there’s a whole physiological ­cascade of events that’s going on and if you have that experience I think it could lead someone to make that decision.

“But what it may lead to is ­people doing more research, ­airlines maybe having to be more transparent about what the actual pitch is and stuff. I don’t know where that’s going.’’

Emery has been with Boeing since the 1980s, when he was hired to teach interpersonal management skills, and was made the ­director of differentiation strategy after leading a team tasked in 1999 with determining what people in several countries wanted in air­liner and cabin comfort.

His first job in his new role was to bring together engineers and designers to create the interior and exterior look of what was arguably the coolest airliner that never flew, Boeing’s Sonic Cruiser.

A musician, martial arts expert and car enthusiast, his work on the Boeing 787 saw him awarded 20 US patents, mostly for seat, ­interior and exterior design.

He is an enthusiastic advocate of cabin design for people but he also is cognisant of the tough ­competitive conditions facing Boeing’s airline customers.

“We’re doing a lot of work right now, a lot of research, on seat width because as we look at potential new aircraft we really want to get the cross-section right,’’ he says. “We want to be able to understand that plus we want to be able to advise our airline ­customers on seat choices, seat-pitch choices and seat-width ­choices. “It’s a tough economic model for the airlines because they really want to get as many seats in the airplane as they can, as many economy seats in the airplane as they can, because that’s how they make their money and so it makes total sense.

“It can be a little tough for the flying public given that economic model.’’

Seat width has been a hot topic with Boeing’s main competitor, European manufacturer Airbus, which last year launched a campaign claiming its cabin cross-sections allowed its planes to have wider seats. Some airlines have also come under fire in recent years for putting an extra seat in each row on Boeing 777s.

Emery dismisses the Airbus campaign and notes the European manufacturer “totally blew that in Hamburg this time around’’ with the introduction of a concept for 11-abreast seating in the A380.

“They always talk about our seats as being 17 inches, which they’re not, and they always talk about their seats being 18 inches, which they’re not,’’ he says.

Emery jokes that the most ­relevant thing he can say about seat width is that there is research that clearly shows, that all things being equal, people prefer a seat that’s wider rather than narrower.

But all things are not equal, he quickly adds.

“And in the in-flight research … we compare, for example, nine-abreast 787s versus eight-abreast A330s, and the 787s with the narrower seat beat the heck out of the A330 with the wider seats,’’ he says

“So seat width is a factor but that’s all it is, it’s just a factor and it isn’t even the strongest factor in determining someone’s overall feeling about the flight.’’

The design guru concedes people often complain about seats but says it is difficult to know what it is they dislike — the seat pitch, width or whether the seat was too hard — without delving deeper.

He believes seat manufacturers have done a good job in making seats thinner by essentially creating more living space, ­although he agrees this frequently gets swallowed up in economy ­because airlines add more seats.

There are also new seat foams, new suspension systems and other innovations to make seats more comfortable, he notes.

“It really behoves an airline to really thoroughly check out how the seats feel and how they’ll work for their missions because there is a difference,’’ he says.

Despite the focus by media and travel websites on seats, Emery says no single element determines how passengers react to a cabin.

He says Boeing’s elegant Sky Interior, designed for the 787 and adapted for its single-aisle planes, was designed so that the different elements interact.

While people often cite the 787’s big windows as its most striking feature, there is an ambience that acts on a subconscious level.

“Things were really designed to play together,’’ he says. “Even the gaseous filtration system and the humidity, they actually interact. With the research, we really found a sweet spot between the humidity level and the way that gaseous ­filtration system worked.’’

Lighting also plays a part and Boeing did extensive testing in lighting mock-ups to see which wavelengths were best, although the science is still out on this.

“It was actually pretty hard but the main thing we were doing on the Dreamliner on Sky Interior is lighting the cabin in such a way that we were trying to create the sense of additional space through the lighting,’’ Emery says.

Boeing put a lot of effort into research both before and after the 787 went into service but Emery says the type of study depends on where the company is in the aircraft development process.

It begins with qualitative research that attempts to get into the deeper parts of people’s brains and highlight unspoken needs.

The company also has a ­research vehicle in Seattle called the passenger experience research centre, or PERC. Emery used the PERC for experiments on the ­positioning of aircraft windows that informed the 787 design.

“It is a vehicle that allows us to put the flying public in an airplane mock-up and manipulate a single variable, just one thing, and see if it makes a difference in the way they’re perceiving all kinds of things,’’ he says.

“We measure things like this cabin — is it cheerful or gloomy? With this cabin, rate your shoulder room on a one-to-five scale — stuff like that.”

The final phase comes once an aircraft is in revenue service and is called validation research. This was used to check flyers’ response to the 787 and whether the various marketing claims made before the launch stood up in practice.

Emery says the company found the 787 scored higher than any other aircraft “on just about every question we have been able to dream up’’. This includes questions about the physical symptoms associated with flying that are addressed by the 787’s higher cabin pressure and humidity.

“It is statistically significantly higher on the majority of the questions,” he says.

“It does not beat the A380 in noise level, quietness. Nothing’s going to beat the A380 on quietness, though, because it’s got such a big wing it totally shields all the ­engine noise and there’s so much space between the cabin wall and the fuselage wall that they can stuff all kinds of insulation in there.

“But with everything else, the 787 wins out.’’

Boeing is now working on its next long-haul derivative, the 777X, and expectations among customers are high after the developments on the 787.

Emery says there will be “some neat things’’ coming with the 777X that the company will start unveiling in the near future.

“I think the important thing to know is we are working to have it absolutely be the next step, the next if not revolution, at least the next evolution in ­travel,’’ he says.

“There will be some exciting things done with lighting, there will be more stuff done in integrating lighting with the lines of the architecture. There will be incredibly increased flexibility for the airlines in what they want to do with their ceiling panels. If they wanted to make the ceiling in the premium (cabin) different to the ceiling in economy, they could.’’

The windows will also be ­larger than the existing 777 but not as big as the 787.

Looking further into the ­future, Emery sees developments in in-flight entertainment (IFE) and its use as a distraction for economy passengers “from the tight or difficult conditions they might be in’’. Again, he emphasises this is a personal rather than a Boeing viewpoint.

This is something that is ­already happening with most airlines offering a smorgasbord of entertainment to keep passengers engaged but Emery expects moves to distract people’s brains in economy class to develop ­further.

“Economy’s the challenge and I think the challenge is kind of like IFE on steroids,’’ he says “It’s going to be just varying forms of virtual experiences and virtual reality and pushing the limits of how we can distract ­passengers from any sense of ­discomfort.’’

He says the technology is growing in leaps and bounds and it does not necessarily have to be the virtual reality headsets with which Qantas is experimenting. This could even include technologies that influence people’s moods.

“It’s going to be cheaper to fool the brain with some good hypnosis than it is to totally redo aeroplanes.’’