Thousands of aircraft cabin suppliers, super-suppliers, seatmakers, aircraft manufacturers, and airlines gathered for the first truly global Aircraft Interiors Expo since the COVID-19 pandemic this June, and one word was front-of-mind and indeed front-of-mouth: sustainability. This critical part of the aviation supply chain — the most expensive purchase decision an airline makes for its aircraft after the engines — is pushing forwards towards sustainability, with new initiatives breaking down barriers to recycling and creating closed-loop processes.
At the expo, Airbus revealed its latest aircraft environmental impact lifecycle analysis, which highlighted that the cabin interior makes up some ten to twenty percent of the overall environmental impact of an airliner. Within that context, the aircraft cabin supply chain has one key environmental driver: lighter weight products have an immediate and lifecycle-long impact on less fuel burn and thus emissions. At the same time, lighter weight can sometimes mean non-recyclable, and the cabin has historically been hugely complicated to recycle, as Finnair found when it DIY-recycled an A319 in 2021.
Data complexity is a real issue, especially for lifecycle analysis
Supply chain opacity is a real issue for airframers, their suppliers, and their sub-suppliers all the way down the chain. At present, cabin lifecycle analyses are very complicated and, in many cases, prohibitively time-consuming, not least owing to the variety of materials used, increasing in-cabin composites, safety requirements (around smoke tests, toxicity and flammability in particular), the type or kind of adhesives that might render otherwise, recyclable materials, non-recyclable, and other factors.
We sat down with Ben Smalley, director of business development at plastics supplier Sekisui Kydex, who emphasises that “you really need to have a lifecycle for all your materials as a supplier, and it’s something we’re working on, but it’s not quick. It’s why everybody needs to be working towards these things, to be giving metrics or a score to the designers or the OEMs who are specifying these materials. I would have my own life cycle analysis of my material. All the different manufacturers and the seat suppliers, they also have their own lifecycle analysis. It does get a little confusing. And I think that’s our responsibility for each of us in our space to make that palatable for the next fish up the chain to be able to take that and use it for theirs.”
Airbus is certainly making a play for that: its analysis was presented by vice president of cabin marketing Ingo Wuggetzer as part of the launch of the new Airspace Eco Calculator, part of the wider Airspace cabin brand within Airbus as an organisation. It is, Wuggetzer explains, a lifecycle analysis tool with a consolidated supplier database that aims to enable airlines to design cabins with their environmental impact in mind.
The Eco Calculator received a warm reception from all the suppliers we spoke with at AIX as a way to reduce supply chain opacity.
Indeed, Smalley says, “it’s the future, with big organisations like that keeping track of what goes where. I do think it’s worthy, it’s moving along — I think it’s a huge lift, and even bigger with somebody like Airbus.”
It’s interesting, though, that none of the proposals for this kind of lifecycle analysis calculator are openly proposing to use blockchain. Once touted as a way to protect intellectual property, it seems that the industry realises that there has to be some kind of imprimatur or stamp of approval on this kind of data, and having airframers be the guardians of this data makes logical sense.
Nearshoring and reshoring arise in the context of transport emissions
Many within the supply chain are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of their operations. Soisa, a Mexico-based seat upholstery specialist with ambitions to grow the amount of assemblies and subassemblies it produces within the interiors supply chain, recently expanded with a new manufacturing facility in Dubai.
“Emirates, Etihad, flydubai, Royal Brunei, Singapore Airlines — we do it in Dubai,” chief executive officer Jacobo Mesta tells us. In addition to the lower emissions “we can reduce the cost of freight and bills of materials.”
Designers currently specify based on exact materials: fabric from supplier X, which happens to be in Germany. Leather from supplier Y in the US. Hook-and-loop fasteners from supplier Z in the UK, thread from supplier ZZ in Vietnam. Changing to a nearshoring model where thread, say, can be sourced by the upholsterer local to their facility is substantially more sustainable.
The benefits, Mesta explains, are both practical — lower lead times, better logistics, shorter turnaround times, and cost efficiency — and environmental.
Provision for recycling processes — and facilities — need to be embedded throughout
Aircraft cabins are not currently designed for disassembly or with end-of-life recycling in mind.
As Ben Smalley explains, “they get the seats together, and get them on the aircraft, and there’s not really a thought of what happens at the end of the life. That’s an afterthought.”
There are some green shoots of progress here, though. Startup business class seatmaker Unum is adopting the Green Cabin Alliance’s series of materials identification recycling symbols, akin to those found on different types of plastic bottles.
The key, Smalley says, is “making sure it is designed to be disassembled, or designed with less components, less glue — to where it can be recycled. Then the biggest thing is having uniform identification, so when some completely other third party takes apart the seat down the road, they know where it is and what it is.”
Seat manufacturer Jamco, too, has evolved its manufacturing processes for its Venture seat to use fewer individual parts, which means less waste and a lower part count — a win for the environment and for seat maintenance.
Sustainability has won the argument within the industry — “as long as you can make it credible, and you have the data behind it,” Smalley emphasises. “I see some things out there that don’t have that, and when you ask the questions, they don’t give you the answers you’re looking for. I think it’s going to be self-governing, to where greenwashing is more dangerous than doing nothing at all.”
Author: John Walton
Published 21 June 2023
;
