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A3, Airbus’ Silicon Valley-based innovation subsidiary, plans to have a passenger aircraft with interchangeable modular interiors ready for demonstration within “a few years.”
The announcement came as part of A3’s unveiling of its Transpose project, which is designing the modular plane.
“Is that ambitious?” Transpose project executive Jason Chua asked of the timeframe in a blog that was posted Tuesday. “Absolutely. But if we keep up our current pace, I think it’s completely achievable.”
The Transpose project isn’t the first venture that has sought to build a modular aircraft, in which a plane’s interior configuration could be quickly and dramatically transformed.
But Chua argues that the Transpose approach differs from others because it won’t require the production of a whole new aircraft — a process that costs billions of dollars and can take a decade or more.
Rather, A3 will make use of existing Airbus cargo planes, in which components such as pallets and containers are already offloaded and loaded in less than an hour.
In an interview Tuesday, Chua said that A3 is currently working with a cargo variant of the Airbus A330-200 widebody jet.
Once the product reaches market, airlines that operate the Transpose project’s modular planes would be able to exchange seating aisles for a dining cabin or turn first-class seats into coach seats, all in the time that an aircraft is turned around between flights. Chua said an airline could even fill a module, or a portion of a module, with exercise bicycles during a day flight and then reconfigure that space for sleeping on a redeye.
That compares to the process for today’s passenger aircraft, in which an interior reconfiguration can take weeks or longer to complete and can cost millions.
The Transpose concept would work by dividing a plane into various module spaces. Modules themselves would be designed by airlines and to their imagination.
Replacing one module with another would be like swapping out cargo. Incoming modules would be lifted by automated conveyance, loaded into the plane and latched to the floor base.
Chua said that the Transpose project has been underway for approximately a year. Detailed technical work has already been done, and A3 has begun building sample modules. Work to ready an A330 aircraft is also underway at a warehouse in San Jose.
Airbus’ goal for any A3 project is to take if from start to demonstration in two to four years, Chua said.
Sourse: travelweekly.com
