On April 2th, Airbus is ready to actualize the Lot Platform for the cabin dubbed as Airbus Connected Experience with the contribution of industrial key partners such as Stella Aerospace, Gategroup and Recaro Aircraft seating. Airbus signed a cooperation agreement with aforesaid industrial partners to make the concept study a reality.

The platform will link in real-time interconnected core cabin components, including the galleys, meal trolleys, seats, overhead bins and other cabin elements. As well as allowing data exchange throughout the cabin for the crew, it is also planned that consolidated information could also be uploaded to the Skywise cloud for subsequent trend analytics.

The connected cabin will provide airlines, flight crews and passengers with significant benefits. For flight crews it means that they can access an integrated platform which keeps pre-flight and real-time data in one place, while passengers will receive a more personalized travel experience. And for airlines the platform would enable them to use the aggregated cabin equipment usage trends (of the connected elements) to perform predictive maintenance

analytics over their entire fleet – thus improving the overall cabin service reliability, quality and performance on board all their aircraft. The platform will also allow wireless streaming to passengers and will enable airlines to host third-party applications for movies.

Soeren Scholz, Airbus’ SVP Cabin & Cargo Program said: “As airlines drive to improve operational efficiencies and reliability, they can now look to the Connected Experience, offered by Airbus together with our industrial partners, to link different elements of the cabin, seats, galleys and trolleys into one central data system.” He adds: “This seamless interconnectivity within the cabin will also be of tremendous benefit to passengers who will beable to enjoy individually tailored, personalized and high-quality inflight service.

Benefits for passengers and cabin crew

The Airbus Connected Experience consists of three key components such as Connected Galley, Connected Seat and Connected bin. These components facilitate the cabin crew workload and enrich the passengers experience.

The Connected galley will enable passengers to pre-order from a dedicated prediction of preferred food & beverages for passengers – which also reduces waste and increases passenger satisfaction. It will also enable the cabin crew to benefit from full transparency of inventory management for efficient operations, as well as facilitating remote passenger communication to deliver quick and personalized passenger service based on individual preferences.

The connected seat will provide passengers with personalized seat position settings as well as remote ordering of preferred beverage or meal via personal devices. Passengers will be able to receive customized content directly on their IFE screens, including movies of interest or relevant advertisements for topics they are interested in – such as recommendations for concerts that they might enjoy at their destination.

As an aircraft manufacturer, the market has clearly expressed interest in having Airbus in the ‘driving-seat’ to develop an IoT platform integrating data within the cabin. This platform is designed to be line fit and retrofit and will be available on the Airbus A320 family first, before extending to other Airbus programs. Not only is this platform fully compatible with Airbus’ Open Software Platform (OSP) currently offered as a service, but the connected experience will also be ‘Skywise Ready’ for future data analytics – allowing predictive maintenance.