HAMBURG — A year on from Airbus’ announcement that it plans to update the A220 cabin to bring it closer to the airframer’s Airspace interiors’ functionality and aesthetic, Runway Girl Network has gleaned further details about the new interiors, the new bins and the new plans to fit a further 19 passenger bags onto the aircraft (using the larger A220-300 as reference here).

Speaking at the Aircraft Interiors Expo with Anaïs Marzo da Costa, head of aircraft interiors marketing, RGN understands that the move isn at its core driven by bin capacity for passengers. With more A220s in service, but in the context of larger bins on the A320 family, the aircraft — which as the Bombardier C Series was a substantial impetus for Airbus’ original A320 Airspace cabin redesign — has been comparatively underprovisioned. 

Cabin crew, too, have identified the current pivoting bins on the present A220 cabin, which are produced by Safran and installed in Mirabel or Mobile, as unwieldy and capacity-constrained, while the pivot’s complex design adds weight and parts to the aircraft. 

The move to a static bin with flip-up lid is therefore a smart one. If an overhead bin is eligible to be something that passengers, crew and airlines consider wildly popular, these bins are it — your author confirms, having heard audible marvelling by other passengers about their spaciousness aboard newer A320neo family aircraft.

Delving into the details of the bin, to use an A320 Airspace analogy, the A220 Airspace flip bins — officially called the Airspace XL Bin for the A220 — are to sit somewhere between the  XL bins and the L bins in terms of what they affect in the cabin. Upgrades to overhead lighting will be available as an option, and inherently a new passenger service unit underneath the bins will be required, but they will not affect the wider cabin elements such as the sidewall.


“The thing with the bins on the A220 is that we have minimised the changes around [them]: it’s a bin change. We are not changing the entire cabin with the Airspace cabin in the A220,” Marzo tells RGN. “We want to minimise, indeed, in terms of retrofits on the A220.”

The new bin, produced by Diehl Aviation, will be available both via linefit and retrofit, with the first deliveries confirmed to start in 2025. This would appear to allow little time for production issues, kinks in the supply chain, or other project slippage.

Airbus will offer existing A220 customers coming to the end of their delivery slots the chance to remain with the original pivot bins for fleet consistency purposes, Marzo says.

“Like always, you have a ramp up, of course, depending on the customer and where the customer is in the delivery stream — if they want the [new] bin or if they want to finish the delivery stream. It will be a ramp up like what we did with the Airspace cabin with the A320, which took months, basically. And that’s going to be the same for the A220.”

Confirming also that there will be a retrofit option for existing operators, Marzo notes that this will be the full-sized A220 Airspace bin rather than an ‘L bin’ type light-retrofit option. The relatively light cabin changes for the A220 Airspace flip bins’ design, with no effect on the sidewall, enable this retrofit to be relatively straightforward.

Regarding certification and installation of the retrofits, Marzo says, “I guess, will be as for others — meaning either SB [service bulletin] by Airbus, or MRO. I cannot answer at this stage, because nothing is defined. But I would say that it should be an open retrofit.”

And what about some future full cabin retrofit, sidewalls included, for a theoretical A220neo?

“Maybe,” Marzo mused.

Related Articles:

• Airbus sounds the death knell for pivot bins on its single-aisle jets
• Airbus comes full C Series circle with A220 Airspace cabin, bins
• Airbus A330neo upgrade package is NIF, not NPS
• Airbus develops “light-refit” larger overhead bins for A320 family
• Press Release: Diehl Aviation supplies new Airspace XL bins for the A220

Featured image credited to Airbus