Airbus has revealed the signing of a cooperation agreement with Jiatai Aircraft Equipment, an aircraft seating manufacturer based in Hubei, China. The agreement will see the Chinese company supply economy-class seats for the A350 widebody series of airliners. The agreement, signed at the 2024 Airshow China, formalizes Jiatai’s work to develop a newly designed economy-class seat optimized for use in the A350 NPS (new production standard) cabin.
The NPS currently offered by Airbus utilizes a host of improvements in A350 cabins, designed to enhance the overall passenger experience and increase the overall useable volume of the aircraft’s interior space. For example, Airbus engineers re-sculpted the cabin sidewalls to allow for a further four inches (10.16 cm) of cabin width. This has consequently opened up the opportunity to make 10-abreast economy seating more comfortable on long-haul flights.
The NPS also incorporates other performance gains combined with various cabin enhancements for airlines and their passengers. These performance improvements include weight savings, improved takeoff performance, and increased Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) capability.
According to Airbus, “the Airspace cabin improvements provide more space, choice, and flexibility, covering a wider cross-section in the revenue passenger areas, more space at both the front and rear of the aircraft for new larger galleys, a new flight-crew rest compartment in the upper crown area, and a new large forward lavatory. The new standard also includes the option for the latest third-generation of electro-dimmable windows.”
Airlines have previously had to fit 16.5in-wide (42cm) seats to facilitate a high-density 3-4-3 cabin configuration in the A350. However, with the new width available to airline customers, they will now be able to fit more comfortable 17in-wide (43.2cm) seats in the broader NPS cabin space. The NPS cabin is also 35in longer than currently offered, an enhancement which has been enabled by shifting the cockpit bulkhead wall forward slightly and moving the rear pressure bulkhead back by one single frame.
For airlines that were unwilling to accept seating of less than 17 inches in width and were therefore forced to continue operating with nine-abreast layouts in their A350s, the ability to move to 10-abreast can enable approximately 30 additional seats to be accommodated in a typical three-class layout on the updated A350-900s and A350-1000s.
The adoption of the NPS cabin will also allow Airbus customers to employ more flexibility in the economy cabin. Should an operator of the A350 choose to switch from a nine-abreast cabin to a 10-abreast configuration, this changeover should not see the aircraft being grounded for any major time scales, as a 3-3-3 seating layout can become 3-4-3 using the same seat rails, tracks, and IFE interfaces. Additionally, increasing the A350’s seat count will not require any material changes to the floor attachments or floor panels, as they were previously designed with 10-abreast seating in mind, as is the air-conditioning flow capacity in the cabin.
According to Jiatai, its cooperation with Airbus is aimed at offering new BFE (‘Buyer Furnished Equipment’) seat options which are “optimized for the enhanced A350 NPS cabin, enabling airlines to choose a cabin configuration with one additional seat per row.” Jiatai is yet to release further details of how it will optimize its seats for the A350 and the expected date of entry into the A350 BFE catalog. It has however confirmed that it plans to “continue to deepen its cooperation” with Airbus on 10-abreast economy-class seats on A350 aircraft.
Jiatai has been a supplier of aviation seats for around 30 years and is also a supplier of seats for the A320 and A330 families of aircraft. To date, the company has delivered more than 100 shipsets of passenger seats to Airbus, says the company.