Story ID: 023 and NBAA 315
The Business Jet's Heart of Green
By: James Wynbrandt
Caption: OEMs, aftermarket providers, and customers are searching for and finding sustainability in the aircraft cabin.
Word Count: 1460
The aircraft cabin plays a key role in business aviation’s sustainability push for reasons extending beyond bottom-line economic benefits. And it’s a part that OEMs and MROs, their vendors, interior designers, and customers are increasingly embracing.
“If we’re going to move our industry and society in the direction of sustainability, it’s going to involve the sum of small things,” said Vadim Felzer, Dassault Aviation’s head of global communications. “That’s where improving the sustainability of the cabin comes in.”
Now, the means and metrics to quantify cabin sustainability are being developed and a new generation of sustainable bio-based materials are being deployed, signaling accelerating momentum for green interiors. If less ballyhooed than technological advances, perhaps it’s not the more modest footprint reductions that sustainable cabins achieve compared to, say, a new-generation powerplant, but rather because aircraft interiors have been largely sustainable for some time.
“We’ve been offering sustainable premium textiles, wood, stone, and naturally sustainable fibers for decades,” said Christi Tannahill, Textron Aviation’s senior v-p of customer experience, citing the wool, cotton, linen, silk, mohair, bamboo, and leather common in Textron’s and other OEMs’ cabin.
In its Savannah, Georgia production facilities, “Sustainable materials are used throughout Gulfstream interiors,” said president Mark Burns, singling out traditional fabrics, along with natural latex and composite veneers, “all of which can be derived from renewable resources.” Furthering cabin sustainability are the largely recyclable components.
“Cabinets are mostly aluminum honeycomb, and can be fed directly to a smelter,” Burns said. “Natural fibers such as silk or wool can have second lives as jute, rags or feedstock for paper mills, while synthetics such as nylon and polyester are sought after by carpet mills to use as feedstock to create more carpet.”
At Bombardier, Global and Challenger cabins feature “a range of upcycled and engineered soft goods made from reclaimed or natural fibers,” said Laurence Casia, manager of industrial design and cabin innovation, many of them showcased on its super-midsize Challenger 3500, which entered service last month. The rapidly renewable wood option for cabin surfaces, and more locally sourced fiber-based materials “are often more durable and lightweight” than those they replace, he said.
In addition to the fabrics, wood, vegetal-tanned leathers, and other renewable and environmentally friendly materials throughout Dassault Aviation’s Falcon cabins, the forthcoming flagship Falcon 10X is designed with modular interior elements to enhance sustainable maintenance. “If there’s an issue with a cabinet, for example,” said Felzer, “It’s easy to repair or modify without having to replace substantial interior components.”
Sustainable materials are currently entering a “super natural” era, uniting them with technology and opening new frontiers in design and sustainability.
Austria-based F/List, long known for its innovative, bespoke interior components and outfittings for luxury residences and super yachts, as well as high-end jet cabins, is “now diving into a lot of sustainability elements,” said innovation head Melanie Prince. “That leads us into different types of materials.”
Internally and in partnerships, F/List is creating “a portfolio of stuff that actually works, and that is actually sustainable,” Prince said. Some mimic and match the look and feel, while outperforming, less sustainable high-end materials—for example, the hides and skins of undomesticated animals. Meanwhile, the bio-based material underlying its Shapeshifter technology, debuting this week at NBAA-BACE, brings to the cabin dynamic movement that can alter interior spaces.
Germany’s Lufthansa Technik, which has introduced recent innovations including voice command in cabin management systems and ultra-thin curved OLED screens that save weight and energy, is adding sustainable materials to the list, including its new AeroFlax. A flax-based replacement fabric for glass or carbon-fiber parts such as sidewalls and ceiling panels, AeroFlax offers a 20 percent weight savings and meets flammability standards.
Concept Cabins
While demonstrator models can serve as state-of-the-art sustainability showcases, “concept cabins” allow OEMs and interiors specialists to introduce novel ideas and applications, and judge market reaction and practicality before offering them to customers.
A concept for the Praetor 500/600 from Brazil’s Embraer envisions “a multidimensional sustainable interior,” incorporating, in addition to sustainable natural materials, design elements based on the Japanese art of “Mokume-gane,” a technique for creating mixed-metal laminate from discarded materials—including, in this case, titanium, copper, and plastic—for cabinetry and other cabin surfaces.
“Affinity,” a widebody cabin concept created by Boeing completion specialist Greenpoint Technologies in Washington, integrates biophilic, or human-nature-centric design and organic materials, with innovative technology. Setting the tone, expansive OLED screens host live green feature walls that display nature scenes, illuminated by circadian rhythm-aligned lighting.
Basel-based Jet Aviation, already committed “to offering our customers a range of sustainable choices,” said v-p of completions sales and marketing Matthew Woollaston, introduced this year a VIP cabin concept—dubbed “Mink”—that includes table marble marquetry made of stone offcuts, complementing the natural fiber fabrics and flooring made from recycled materials. The MRO is concurrently investigating additional materials for use in its ongoing completions and refurbishments, including plant-based leather alternatives and water-based paints. These materials “enhance cabin sustainability without sacrificing the look, feel, and quality,” said Woollaston.
If Woollaston’s comment raises the question of whether luxury and sustainability can co-exist in the business jet cabin, the response from the frontlines is uniform.
“Sustainability, quality, and craftsmanship are without a doubt compatible,” said Burns, adding, “Natural materials at their best are typically also the finest.”
Said Casia at Bombardier, “We’ve demonstrated that sustainability doesn’t mean having to make any compromises.” The greener elements, he added, “are as comfortable and luxurious as they are sustainable, and as light and beautiful as traditional materials.”
Tannehill pointed out that cabin materials are selected first for their natural properties. The sustainability test is the ultimate, not primary criteria.
“Wool is sound dampening and naturally flame resistant, and cotton, linen, silk, mohair, and bamboo are also naturally flame-resistant,” as well as durable and luxurious, she noted.
The one outlier among the sustainable natural elements in the cabin is the signature polished hardwood veneers, long standard in high-end interiors, and traditionally sourced from slow-growing, exotic, or endangered tropical hardwoods. Today a variety of sustainable veneers and other cabin surface options are available.
Comlux Completions is among those that use reclaimed and repurposed veneers to create new ones. “You cannot tell the difference between these reclaimed products and traditional veneers,” said company CEO Daron Dryer, noting that the repurposed product is available as an option on the forthcoming ACJTwoTwenty.
Challenger and Global cabins offer hardwood veneer made from fast-growing eucalyptus trees, cutting carbon dioxide by-products by 43 percent, and water consumption by 94 percent over traditional veneer production.
Dassault’s multiple alternatives to standard veneer include an in-house process that reduces varnish applications and applies a paint finish over sustainable wood. At Textron, the composite veneers in Cessna Citation and Beechcraft cabins are made “by using every scrap of veneer left over from a ‘green certified,’ responsibly harvested initial veneer,” Tannahill said, with the pieces laminated together to “create a new, modern grain pattern.”
When natural veneer is used, she added, it’s sourced from “high-quality surplus inventory when available to minimize new production processing efforts.”
Customers in the aftermarket can opt out of veneer and choose an entirely different surface look, or go with the retro exotic hardwood style, all without having to source any raw materials or account for their foot size.
MROs Duncan Aviation and Liberty Partners offer hydrodipping, a low-cost process that shrink wraps a detailed, 3D image replicating the look of any material—or a scene or artwork—onto almost any complex, solid shape. A hydrodipped cabinet, for example, after the film is applied in a dunk tank, can mimic an exotic veneer or carbon fiber surface indistinguishable from the real McCoy or just as easily showcase artwork or a fanciful tableau, providing more options for demonstrating individuality, as well as sustainability.  
Because the energy used in development and production is a major lifecycle GHG source—and bottom line cost—reducing its consumption has also been a key sustainability focus, piggybacking on investments in efficiency justified in the name of economy. Dassault has reduced the emissions of its entire production process by nearly 20 percent in the last five years, while Textron takes advantage of wind power in Kansas and Bombardier uses hydroelectyric power at its manufacturing facilities in Canada.
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