FORT WORTH — Recaro Aircraft Seating has pulled a variety of levers to manage the post-pandemic supply chain constraints impacting aircraft interiors and the wider aviation industry — including using alternative, trusted sources for certain parts — but the world’s leading economy class seatmaker expects one link in the chain to take a little bit longer to recover, and that is embedded inflight entertainment.

Runway Girl Network sat down with Dr. Mark Hiller, CEO of Recaro Aircraft Seating and Recaro Holding, for a wide-ranging interview at the firm’s Americas facility in Fort Worth, Texas, which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary.

“Overall,” he told RGN, “I would say, in terms of the supply chain, lead times are still longer. Freight has improved, but parts availability is still longer than before, and prices are still higher. It’s relaxing a bit, step by step, but it’s not on the pre-Covid level. It’s similar in all the regions we serve.”

“The constraints can be seen at specific companies,” Dr. Hiller continued. “Some of the companies — like we did — kept their teams, their knowledge, their capacities, and they are much more easily ramping up again. Others just reduced headcount and lost a lot of capacity and knowledge. Now they’re struggling at ramping up. There’s not much related to the regions, but more in how specific companies dealt with the crisis.”

Despite the challenges, Recaro Aircraft Seating has been able to use, for a variety of commodities, “second and third sources, so we have alternatives, and we always try to source in the region as best as possible”, he said.

After all, the Schwaebisch Hall, Germany-based seatmaker has production facilities in Qingdao, China, serving the Asia-Pacific region; in Fort Worth, serving the Americas; and in Swiebodzin, Poland; in addition to its German operation. “Broadly there are structural parts that are globalized and globally purchased or sourced but most seat parts like plastic parts and dress covers, we try to source it through the local footprint. So, in Asia, we get it out of Asia and in the US, we just get it in the US,” Dr. Hiller explained.

IFE bottlenecks

But, he added, “there’s one particular commodity which is also a little bit special. I will elaborate on this one.”

IFE is the segment or commodity hit by electronics shortages, the chip shortages. For sure this has eased up. But you know there was a big crisis in the automotive industry, which is the larger industry than aviation. It will take longer for this to recover.

Secondly, especially with IFE, there is no dual source; it’s the whole system and it’s the supplier to the airline. For us it’s just BFE [buyer furnished equipment]. So, we are tracking it, but it’s more or less under the control of the airline, which doesn’t make it easier. The IFE supplier delivers it on behalf of the airline to us, and it’s something which is needed right away. Cables and connectors are items we can’t install afterwards.

Nevertheless, we’ve found various ways in how to deal with some of the shortages in IFE, for instance by installing the displays right before the seats go into the aircraft. Everything is managed to support the delivery, yet it creates additional efforts. The situation is improving, but slowly.

Asked by RGN if Recaro Aircraft Seating is seeing delays across the board with the three major embedded IFE companies, Dr. Hiller said: “In general, they’ve all been hit by the shortages from the electronics.” Whilst the situation is easing, the global chip and screen shortages — also flagged by the Recaro Aircraft Seating CEO to RGN this spring — have created bottlenecks that are still smarting.

When it comes to integrating electronics into aircraft seats, seatmakers are responsible for ensuring that IFE parts are listed in Technical Standard Order (TSO) drawings because they control the design and manufacturing quality of the seat. In short they hold the data around integrated IFE/seats.

“There is a need to do the ‘end of line’ testing, yes, which means we are not developing it, but installing everything and then at ‘end of line’ we need to ensure that everything is connected well and that it’s running. That means that if there’s a quality defect, it might not be caused by us, but it will pop up at the end of the line,” explained Dr. Hiller. “Additionally, IFE did not go away post-Covid. Maybe to a degree on single aisle, short-range aircraft, but on long-range aircraft, you see it. And the displays are even larger, and there’s the power supply and so on.” Larger displays add to certification complexities.

But in the context that aviation is working to become a more sustainable industry, the trend towards adding far larger IFE screens across all cabin classes on twin-aisle aircraft — clearly evident, for example, in Japan Airlines’ new four-cabin Airbus A350-1000 twinjets — appears to fly in the face of environmental objectives.

How does one rationalize or reconcile the sustainability message with the fact that this is where we’re heading on the IFE front, RGN asked?

“I’m not sure if you can rationalize it,” replied Dr. Hiller. “Integration is much better, however. One example, which we showed last year at AIX [Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg], is Astrova from Panasonic. We received good feedback about the integration of that IFE system into our seat. If you remember, maybe ten years ago, there were still big boxes in the seats to support IFE. This is more or less gone. Boxes are below the seat pan or in the seat structures. And there is a much better integration for better living space and much better comfort.”

Another positive in the market is that seatmakers and IFE suppliers are collaborating much earlier in the design process. “Normally, IFE suppliers reach out to us or we to them in advance of developing new products, to share some knowledge about the size of the seat, where boxes would be integrated, cables, wiring and stuff like. It’s more of a parallel development to assure a better integration. I think this is something that has improved very much over the many years,” noted Dr. Hiller.

“And I would say 25 years ago, people went on the aircraft, and had no phone or iPad. Now they have it, but they’re using both in parallel with the IFE. It’s amazing. Some people use dual screens or even three screens.”

Twenty-five years ago also happens to be the timeframe that Recaro Aircraft Seating decided to establish a presence in the Dallas area, setting up the Fort Worth facility which is now gearing up to produce 40,000 Pax units in 2024.

The decision to launch Recaro Aircraft Seating Americas “was mainly based on our market success out of the Americas”, explained Dr. Hiller. “At that time, we already had several customers, and they were looking for us to have a more local footprint. At that point, we had support for Boeing in Seattle, with some personnel. But we didn’t have a footprint. Therefore, the intention was to really set up a site here in the US. And Texas for sure — with American Airlines in the neighborhood — was the favored location.”

Sunitha Vegerla is the General Manager in charge of the Americas market as well as the Recaro Aircraft Seating Americas operation in Fort Worth. “She is taking care of the customers. She has an engineering team, supply chain, production as well as customer service, really from end to end,” noted Dr. Hiller. That work includes managing some fascinating aircraft seat upgrade programmes, including for narrowbody operators that have eschewed embedded IFE in favor of streaming content to passengers’ own devices.

“We do a lot of modifications in terms of upgrading features. One example, and we’ve seen this trend in the Americas and the rest of the regions later, is the tablet holders. With all the Wi-Fi and USB availability, more and more airlines are moving in this direction on the narrowbodies compared to the widebodies with the screens,” said Vegerla.

“With our new seats, we introduced the tablet holder feature, and of course when airlines introduced that, there was feedback from customers that they liked certain airplanes in the fleet, and they wished to get on those airplanes more than the others lacking this feature. So, this also drives additional modification requests where we’re able to integrate those features into the seats. We are doing one with Alaska Airlines that we’re incorporating tablet holders.”

“More generically,” added Dr. Hiller, “we delivered a seat ten years ago, and the customer asked for new features And, now we’re running a major modification program on 10,000 seats and modifying them. We want to be the partner of the airline over the lifecycle of the product; we don’t just want to deliver the seat. We also do the customer service, supporting and helping to upgrade or change features.

“Sometimes airlines are not sure if, for example, on a premium economy or domestic first class, if they should go for a leg rest. Sometimes, they start without a leg rest and later on ask us to run a modification to add a leg rest, or to take it out to reduce weight. So, this is something we’re also supporting. It’s never easy. Because with certification, it needs to be something that can be done on-wing if possible, so you’re not taking the seats out, modifying them, and putting them back in. Sometimes it needs to be done during a maintenance check so there is a lot of coordination. And it’s not where we are, it’s where the aircraft is. Such modification programs can be run globally at different locations.”

Recaro Aircraft Seating, which provides seating platforms across economy, premium economy and business class cabins — holding a 30-35% market share in economy class alone — is clearly staying busy in this post-pandemic world. In terms of RFQs for aircraft seats and indeed seat awards from airlines and lessors, Recaro Aircraft Seating has already reached pre-Covid levels, revealed Dr. Hiller to RGN. “In terms of revenue, not. This year we might end up at a 70% level of pre-covid. And mainly due to the fact that when we receive an order, it takes one or two years until it’s revenue.”

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