Skift Take
Building a coach airline seat is not like creating home furniture. Building stuff for aircraft is remarkably complicated. We got an inside look recently at the production center for an aircraft seat maker. Here's some of what we learned.
When EnCore, a company that makes components for aircraft interiors, including galleys, which might cost $300,000 per plane, set out to build coach seats, it didn't try to disrupt the industry by creating the world's most innovative product.
It could have — its employees have the technological acumen— but airlines are risk-averse, and most want versions of what they've always had. For its new segment, called Lift by EnCore, the company went simple, promising a functional seat that will be comfortable for passengers but thin enough to satisfy requests from some discount carriers seeking to install as many seats as possible.
Encore is new to the market, but it has a competitive advantage. Last year, Boeing said Lift would create its preferred seat for new 737s. Airlines can choose other seats, but these will be the only ones designed to complement the aircraft's signature "Sky Interior," with its blue LED lighting simulating the sky.
"Boeing spends so much time and effort in the Boeing Sky Interior and thinking about perception of space and perception of in-flight comfort, but the big missing piece for them is they had no influence over the seat, which is such a big piece of passenger experience — the thing you actually sit it," said Elijah Dobrusin, Lift's vice president for development & strategy.
Lift has signed up India's SpiceJet and two European customers, neither of which it will name. The company's Huntington Beach, California production center is already churning out seats, with the first ones expected to fly by late next year. Lift is also creating a 787 seat, though it has no customers.
Boeing is working with Lift in part because it wanted to give airlines a seating option likely to be completed on time and on budget. Some of Lift's competitors, including France's Zodiac Aerospace, have had trouble meeting contractual requirements to airlines, and when seats are not ready, Boeing must store the airplanes until delivery.
"We believe our customers would benefit from a wider range of options and more reliable, on-time performance in the interiors and seating market," Blake Emery, director of differentiation strategy for Bo
