“Those improvements were very important for us and there was room to make them, so we thought it was a great opportunity to include them and fulfil all our customers’ needs,” adds Iberia’s Patilla. “A blue sky project it is more exciting for designers, but the objective from the beginning was to make the product better with a longer bed and wider seats, to increase privacy, and to give everyone direct aisle access and extra stowage, and we achieved that.” Better still, Mormedi ensured that the redesigned Solstys would not cost more to buy or manufacture. It was a tight programme in terms of delivery time, so there were some issues we could not change as that would have required recertification of the seat, which would have been impossible in the deadline. “It is easier when you have the kinematics from the start, but it does make constraints. “Even though we started with defined kinematics, we created a completely new shell and that gave us an opportunity to make a new seat,” explains Jaime Moreno, CEO of Mormedi. The product is finished with a 15.4in Panasonic IFE display, which will be complemented by GSM and wi-fi as soon the relevant permissions are granted by DGAC, the Spanish civil aviation authority. The armrest was also redesigned to go down as well as up, adding a little more width in bed mode. The standard Solstys has a 73in bed length, and Iberia was adamant that it required a minimum of 76in, so Mormedi set about redesigning the shell – and while making changes, why not optimise a few other elements? Thus the shell was redesigned to give the extra 3in in bed length, and ways to create additional space were examined and implemented, such as moving cabling to free-up an extra 1.5in in seat width (now 22.5in), and also creating space for new stowage areas such as a water bottle holder, while a little more room was found in the footwell. Iberia selected the EADS Sogerma Solstys for business class, and while the airline did not want an all-new seat, it was not an off-the-shelf option either. Two seats were proposed for both business and economy, with a herringbone and a staggered design proposed for business to meet the direct aisle access requirement, and following thorough evaluation with focus groups composed of Iberia’s frequent flyers, as well as its engineering and maintenance teams, the seat models were decided upon for its incoming A330-300s – albeit with a 12-month delay during the creation of IAG. Following many evaluation flights, together with market analysis and benchmarking exercises, the team put together its proposals for a two- or three-class offer on the understanding that Iberia did not want any ‘blue sky’ seating concepts. Madrid-based Mormedi worked on the design strategy for the new seats, which involved understanding the airline, what it required, and what its customers want. We wanted to deliver this on board.” Building business It’s not all about siesta or fiesta – it’s about the passion we put into things, the vibrant and energetic way we do things. We also wanted to match that brand experience with a professional feel on board. So we wanted to deliver the feelings of vitality and expressiveness that go with the Iberia brand and the Spanish way of life, which is something very powerful and something many envy. It’s a bold goal, but what specifically did Interbrand want to achieve? Borrero explains: “We did benchmarking and discovered that when you think of Air France, British Airways, American Airlines or Lufthansa, because they are all flag carriers you immediately associate the brand with feelings of the country they belong to. The scheme will project Iberia’s new brand into the future and reposition the brand as a new world-class carrier.” We are in the middle of a full reinvention of the brand experience for Iberia – not simply a new cabin experience. But now the airline feels it is time to bring something new to the brand and to look to the future. “Because it was a public company, in the past it was managed by engineers. “Iberia has never really carried out a deep rethink of its brand,” explains Borja Borrero, Interbrand Madrid’s executive creative director of the project. In 2009 Iberia selected the team that would work with its in-house experts to deliver its aims: Interbrand for the brand experience, Mormedi for the industrial design elements, and YourStudio for the CMF. And a little added glamour wouldn’t go amiss either. These demands included enhanced aisle access, extra privacy and stowage, and improved IFE. But as Francisca Patilla, Iberia’s product design manager, explains, “As the years passed, we knew there were some features we needed to improve – features that were demanded by our customers.” The current long-haul business product, introduced in 2005, is already a good offer, with full-flat beds and more than 2m of personal space.
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