Attached to Chapter 14/Flying Colours
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Since JETLINER CABINS was first published in 2003, the centenary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, I have received several requests for more information about the original cover picture. There were a number of enquiries, including: ‘It looks a bit like an Airbus aircraft — but which one?’; ‘Can you confirm whether this is a Boeing jet?’; and ‘Why the 2+1+2 configuration?’ THE ANSWER:The computer-simulated picture contains architectural and design elements associated with aircraft produced by both manufacturers. The ingenious wraparound cover treatment, shown on the right, was the brilliant brainchild of Peter Christoph Berg, the Director of Computergraphics ACA, whose words of wisdom are quoted in Chapter 13/Upgrades: Refurbishing Aloft. The aim was to concentrate attention on a generic cabin environment rather than comparing the characteristics of individual aircraft types. Featuring a wide-body, twin-aisle aircraft makes it clear that we are dealing with modern jetliners — as opposed to older aircraft types, which were all single-aisle. The double-seat units fitted nicely along the sidewalls — but how to handle the spine of the book? One single seat in a row is unusual, but not unknown. For example, in the 1980s, Pan Am flew individual centreline seats near the front of its First Class cabins, and Singapore Airlines had a similar configuration for its luxurious SkySuites on its Boeing B747 fleet. Working from the superlative aviation-grade collections at Lantal Textiles, Monika Luethi, Lantal’s Director of Design (whose valuable Comments appear in Chapter 12/The Leather Forecast), co-ordinated a group of decorative patterns for the carpet, curtain fabric and seat-cover upholstery. The organic motifs illustrate a number of points covered in those sections of JETLINER CABINS that focus on the soft elements of cabin-decor schemes. As shown in the pictures (above and below), the favourite secondary-accent options ranged from eye-catching yellow and ecologically correct green to the classic, winning blue (a topic debated in detail by Lantal Textiles and others in Chapter 14/Flying Colours). So, who said that designing a cover should be really easy? |
Above: Wraparound dust cover of the Hardback Edition of JETLINER CABINS,
ISBN 0-470-85165-1, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2003. 
Above: Cover of the Paperback Edition of JETLINER CABINS,
ISBN 0-470-01933-6, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2006. |
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MORE INFORMATIONPublished Article about the evolution of cabin interiors written by Super Times by Jennifer Coutts Clay, Aircraft Interiors International 20th Anniversary Showcase 2018 magazine, Challenges faced by jetliner-cabin designers and the big-budget completion programmes in First, Business and Economy Class CONTACTS mentioned
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This Case Study was first published as an article in Aircraft Interiors International magazine in September 2005. I wrote this piece as a response to Readers asking whether the cover showed the interior of an Airbus or a Boeing jetliner. As described above, the answer, thanks to the wonderful work of Peter Christoph Berg, was both.
- Jennifer Coutts Clay
| www.jetlinercabins.com |