Seatmakers are always seeking to carve out space from the airline cabin, but a new set of challenges are arising, particularly aboard the new generation of business class mini-suites, and most especially aboard the suites to be installed on the forthcoming set of premium-heavy mid-to-longhaul narrowbody aircraft. 

Here, every precious inch matters, particularly as the market in business class continues to grow in physical stature as taller, broader younger generations enter the cabin’s demographic. Yet absent is much use of a smart design element that can carve out a substantial amount of space for relatively little tradeoff: what your author refers to as the “3D wave”. 

These are, at their core, curved dividing structures that effectively borrow space from one side of the structure (at a point where it is needed less from a passenger room perspective) and lends it to the other side (at a point where it is needed more).

A strong (if admittedly niche) example of this is the Virgin Atlantic “Project Yuri” Upper Class Dream Suite just over a decade ago. Rarely has there been a seat where a 3D wave has been so successful in offering a little extra space where it matters most in exchange for a little less space where it matters less. (That Project Yuri was not overall a success is not a function of this element of its design.)

Another example is the Qatar Airways Qsuite, manufactured by Collins Aerospace, where the aisle-side shrouding and doors flex inwards by about a handsbreadth roughly 30cm (about a foot) above the bed surface. This maximises bed width yet widens the aisle at elbow height when standing, often a point of constraint in doored suite cabins.

Inherently, the 3D wave goes beyond a 2D version, which would be a simple tesselation of business class seats, dating all the way back to the original British Airways Club World “Mohawk” seat from 2000 (and its later 2006 development) where the 2D version of the wave is in essence the vertical divider.

Yet modern seats rarely implement the 3D wave. Your average herringbone seat, whether inward-facing like the Thompson Vantage Solo or Collins Aurora, or outward facing like Stelia’s Opera or Safran’s Vue, still features mostly vertical dividing elements throughout.

As some airlines discovered in the mid-2000s, these flat walls can often contribute to a feeling (based, in fairness, in reality) that there is a lack of elbowroom, which risks the problem of the cabin being perceived as “coffin class”. With the lower overhead bins of narrowbodies compared with widebodies, this risk is certainly one to watch.

The absence of a 3D wave is particularly noticeable at head and foot level, where many taller and broader-shouldered passengers find that they feel most constrained in modern business class seats.

Here in particular, it would seem that opportunity should abound to add a little bit of curve here and there to bump out at the shoulders in bed mode, whether that means a Qsuite-style bump on the aisle side or a cleverly engineered curve that makes the most of the shape of the aircraft’s sidewall.

Indeed, once considering the 3D Wave, perhaps other little-used design elements along the 3D track might be considered.

Stelia’s Equinox 3D might be an example too far, but Safran’s Aries seat — in essence, a version of Cirrus where the centre seats in each row overlap vertically at foot level, with one of the centre pairings of seats reclining to a lower bed and the other higher — could provide some useful inspiration even for narrowbody cabins without a centre section of seats.

Related Articles:

• The new cabins of 2024 — and what they will tell us about aviation
• A retrospective on Cathay Pacific’s Cirrus business class
• Recaro’s Dr. Mark Hiller on how aircraft seats are evolving
• Avoiding coffin class: the new inward facing herringbone challenge
• A premium for business class seats: the narrowbody dilemma
• Airbus and Stelia show off new C Suite ultra-compact narrowbody seat
• JAMCO focuses on details with Quest stagger

Featured image credited to John Walton