Airbus unveils the aircraft cabin that social media built

If you’ve been hyperventilating over dystopian “cabins of the future” which have gone viral over the past year, it’s time to break out the champagne and toast social media’s power to move mountains. (Or at least make icebergs jiggle a bit.)

Airbus revealed its new will-actually-happen cabin, called Airspace, in London this week, and it is designed to make travelers happy online and in the air.

The aircraft manufacturer credited social media and the Internet for making their designers sit up, take notice and write stuff down, before heading back to the drawing board.

“In the past, we just created a great product and we allowed the airlines to customize it and to do what they want to do on the airplane,” explained Dr. Kiran Rao, executive vice president of strategy and marketing at Airbus. “Today we’re reaching out to the passengers who fly on the aircraft. Today they are making big decisions based on product, and the experience that they have. So we listen to our customers and our customers’ customers.”

The customers of customers

Those “customer’s customers” would be us — the tweeting, sharing, raving, rating, flying public.

“They, through social media, are … comparing one airline versus another, they’re comparing one seat versus another,” said Rao. “They’re comparing the experience they have from one airline to another. That is what has driven the change from what we’ve done in the past.”

Airbus’ new Airspace cabin will launch on the manufacturer’s new A330neo aircraft in 2017.

The Airspace borrows a lot from the attractive design features of Airbus’ new A350 aircraft — which is good.

With a well thought out cabin layout and a well-lit open airy cabin feel, the A350 has proven to be a nice way to fly.

The Airspace cabin adds appropriate touches which fit the new Airbus A330neo model, and decorative touches which let airlines personalize their aircraft without (hopefully) messing the whole thing up.

Airbus even proposed 3D printed decorative panels to play off special cabin lighting, creating pleasing decorative light displays. The manufacturer later clarified that 3D printed panels are not included, and were merely a future decor suggestion.

Still, Airbus created both a feeling of space onboard and — this is the important bit — actual space.

Airbus also said they will stick to their guns and insist airlines pick a reasonably passenger friendly cabin lay-out, avoiding cabin crowding and ensuring each passenger gets an 18” inch seat. But airlines make the final decision.

Because social

To persuade airlines to leave Airspace alone, Airbus will use feedback from the online community.

“We do see some metrics coming out from social media,” said François Caudron, Senior VP Marketing. “So you can see that those things are happening. I mean six months ago there was nothing.”

Note: We did not have the heart to interrupt Caudron to tell him that social media, the internet and travel rating sites are not six months old. He’s such a nice man and seemed so pleased with his discovery that we just let him talk.

“You go on the TripAdvisor site and you see all airlines labeled and they are being rated. It is a big change and, yes, I think the passenger is becoming a consumer,” Caudron continued. “Basically, like any other product, he’s not just buying the product but the experience that goes with it. He wants to share his own experience but also benefit from others’ experience. ‘OK, you flew on that airline. You flew on this airline. What did you think of it?’ It is very quickly changing. We can notice the difference over the past six months.” (Awww. Bless.)

The manufacturer hopes to assuage passenger fears and persuade airlines that they need to pay attention to online customer feedback.

“Previously, the customer would go on the web and book his flight and mainly check the prices,” Caudron continued. “Today there are tools available with Seat Guru and things like that — which have been around for quite some time — but now there are much more collaborative platforms coming up with Routehappy and TripAdvisor.”

Caudron’s point: People talk about planes online, and Airbus gets that.

People have also been freaking out about some sadly misunderstood patent concepts floating around the interwebs over the past year, and Airbus gets that too.

The manufacturer hopes to assuage passenger fears and persuade airlines that they need to pay attention to online customer feedback.

“These different factors are coming into the decision making process. I mean, if you’re a passenger, what else do you care about other than the cabin? This is the place where you can live for 8 or 12 hours. This is your prime focus. ‘What kind of comfort am I going to get?’” Caudron asks — just as you might.

The cabin with the most “likes” wins

If we had a skeptical nature, we’d say that all this talk of social media is a selling pitch to persuade airlines that Airspace by Airbus is the flyer-preferred option. But we would never say a thing like that. We’ll let Airbus say it.

“It’s essential to us that when a passenger wants to book a flight they check whether it’s an Airspace cabin, and if it’s an Airspace cabin it means spaciousness and smartness and comfort features,” Caudron said.

Bottom line, with monuments and galleys redesigned to leave more room for passengers, a lovely welcome onboard area, plenty of room for luggage in the overhead bins, better environmental controls and soothing decorative lighting, the Airspace by Airbus should be a very pleasant flying experience — assuming airlines get out of its way.

Check it out: Airbus offers an immersive virtual reality tour on-line.

Nice. Right? You have yourself, your friends, and all the people you’ve ever hearted, thumbs-upped or starred to thank for this. The online community has finally sparked a flying revolution.

Well, not a “revolution” per se — Airspace by Airbus is more “familiar cutting-edge cozy.”

But still! People power!

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