FARNBOROUGH — At an air show where Boeing left its new aircraft at home, the big attraction for the US airframer on the commercial side of its business was inside its 777X mockup, within the company’s large pavilion.

It’s often informative to compare a manufacturer’s messaging to the specialist passenger experience audience at an event like Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) versus the wider aviation audience at an event like Farnborough, and following a presentation to assorted media Runway Girl Network sat down with regional director of cabin marketing Stephanie Werner for a deeper discussion. 

Sitting in the 777X cabin for a third time, and looking beyond the strikingly large windows and very impressive lighting effects of which Boeing is deservedly proud, the design consideration given to the 777X cabin really hit home. 

Boeing is offering three options for overhead bins in the centre section of the 777X’s cabin: standard bins, no bins at all, and a new smaller premium bin option.

The Boeing 777X’s standard bins are impressively large and pleasingly concave, both in their outboard and centre configurations. The airframer was showing four large carryons fitting comfortably on their sides, with some space even left over. In the zone immediately behind doors 1, the front crew rest is integrated into the bin form in a seamless aesthetic.

This standard bin configuration is the physical mockup within the Farnborough pavilion (and in the rear seated section shown at AIX), and the new concave bins are very impressive in the spaciousness they generate. 

On the other end of the spectrum is the no-bins option, which is increasingly popular with airlines for weight and simplicity reasons, though not necessarily so with passengers on denser business class configurations without integrated storage.

Your author recently flew on Lufthansa’s latest A350, which has no bins between doors 1 and 2 but full bins between doors 2 and 3 — and business class in both places — and the version with bins was substantially easier in storage terms.

The 777X no-bins version features a higher concave ceiling that follows the line of the outboard bins, and features a rounded ceiling monument for the crew rest that is very pleasing in a rather Star Trek: The Next Generation kind of softly curved aesthetic.

Perhaps in response to the need to balance premium cabin passenger storage requirements with weight and the desire to have a higher central cabin roof, Boeing is now introducing a premium bin, which is essentially the standard bin but cut off approximately two thirds down. This looks attractive, feels premium yet enables fuss-free storage in the front cabins.

The new enormous windows will feature a choice of either electrically dimmable windows (EDWs) or the more traditional physical sliding blinds. EDWs are love-them-or-hate-them — or sometimes both. Passengers are generally fans once they figure out how they work, until flight attendants decide that a day flight where they are trying to adjust to a different time zone should be enforced as sleep time.

Boeing went all-in with them on the 787, Airbus initially said a rather pointed no on the A350 and then started offering them alongside physical blinds, and now Boeing is moving to the same dual-offering model. 

In a change to previous messaging around seat size on the 777X, Boeing is advertising a seat width choice to airlines: either the 18-inch seats slightly wider than today’s 777s as a result of the widened 777X cabin, a narrower 17.2-inch seat with a wider aisle, or something in the middle. 

Both configurations had a full cabin visual mockup on the big screens at Farnborough that your author does not recall seeing at AIX, and Werner confirmed in response to our question that the full range from 17.2 inches to 18 inches is available, with no structural constraints from seat tracks.

All in all, the 777X cabin impresses: it is a major upgrade in terms of spaciousness and aesthetic, with new options for airlines and their passengers, both keenly awaiting the actual aircraft.

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All images credited to John Walton