Flight International - 10Dec2019

AIR TRANSPORT

flightglobal.com 10-16 December 2019 | Flight International | 11

Alitalia unions support

a nationalisation

proposal

Air Transport P

S

eating joint venture Adient

Aerospace has significantly

increased its operation with the

acquisition of economy-class spe-

cialist Lift by EnCore.

Under the deal, headcount at

Adient Aerospace will increase

by around 40%, says chief execu-

tive Alan Wittman. The company

also gains a production facility in

Huntington Beach, California, to

add to its existing Kaiserslautern,

Germany site.

Adient Aerospace already had

a relationship with Lift by

EnCore, offering that company’s

“tourist-class” seats as a comple-

ment to its own Ascent business-

class model; at the recent Dubai

air show, the Lift seats were

shown on Boeing's exhibit in a

10-abreast layout inside a cross-

section of a 777X fuselage.

The purchase effectively sees

the Lift business transfer between

different Boeing companies: in

June this year the airframer bought

EnCore Group, which owns the

Lift line, rebranding it as Boeing

EnCore Interiors. Adient Aero-

space, meanwhile, is a joint ven-

ture between Boeing and automo-

tive supplier Adient, which

started operating in October 2018.

Despite the link with the Seat-

tle airframer, Wittman says Adi-

ent Aerospace paid a “genuine

valuation” for the Lift business:

“Boeing didn’t just give it to us.”

However, he declines to put a

specific value on the deal.

Lift by EnCore’s economy-class

seat has now been rebranded as

Ovation, says Wittman. He de-

scribes the purchase as “really

strategic” for the joint venture, giv-

ing Adient Aerospace its own “de-

sign, test and build” capability.

Wittman says Adient Aero-

space’s backlog is for about 70

shipsets – covering Boeing single-

and twin-aisle aircraft – with the

Ascent seat to launch on 787-9s

for Hawaiian Airlines in 2021.

“We have been encouraged by

the market reaction – that’s a

pretty good uptake in a year,”

says Wittman.

Although part-owned by Boe-

ing, Wittman says it has also been

talking with Airbus and is “going

through the vetting process”, with

the European airframer to “pro-

vide another choice for airlines”.

While declining to offer specif-

ics on Adient Aerospace’s next

product, Wittman says it is “put-

ting a lot of effort into the single-

aisle business-class market”.

That is driven by the growth

of longer-range narrowbodies, he

says, where people are prepared

to “pay for more comfort on an

eight-hour trip”. ■

STRATEGY DOMINIC PERRY LONDON

Acquisition of Lift by EnCore

gives Adient seat in economy

Joint venture’s premium products complemented by purchase of ‘tourist class’ specialist

T

he maximum accommoda-

tion for Airbus’s A350-

has been cleared for an increase

to 480 seats, through the installa-

tion of modified exits.

The twinjet had previously

been approved for up to 440 seats,

but the development of a new

Type-A+ exit, with a dual-lane

evacuation slide, has enabled the

airframer to secure a higher seat

count from the European Union

Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

The 480-seat version requires a

10-abreast layout and modified

exits on all four pairs of doors.

EASA lists various zonal con-

figurations for this version, with

up to 120-124 seats in the forward

cabin, 170-180 seats in the central

cabin, and 180-190 seats aft. The

authority also gives options for a

maximum of 460 or 470 seats if

fewer Type-A+ exits are fitted.

EASA says the minimum num-

ber of cabin crew required increas-

es to nine if the maximum seating

exceeds 400, adding that a third

crew member must be stationed at

each pair of Type-A+ exits.

These modified exits have also

been used by Airbus to raise the

maximum accommodation of the

A330-900 to 460 seats.

Increasing the seat-count of the

A350-1000 could enhance its

competitiveness against Boeing’s

777X, which can seat 426 passen-

gers in a two-class layout. ■

CABIN

DAVID KAMINSKI-MORROW

LONDON

Higher-density

A350-1000 gets

EASA approval

DELIVERY

Widebody reports for SAS operations

Scandinavia’s SAS has taken delivery of its first Airbus A350-900,

one of eight of the twinjets the carrier has on order. The handover

of the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-powered aircraft (SE-RSA) took

place on 28 November. SAS has configured the A350, named

Ingegerd Viking, with 300 seats including 40 in the business-class

cabin and 32 in premium economy. It plans to begin operating

the aircraft on 28 January, initially on its route between

Copenhagen and Chicago. SAS currently uses a mix of A330s and

A340s on the Chicago route.

H Gousse/Airbus

A 10-abreast configuration for 777X was on display at Dubai air show

BillyPix