Aircraft Pneumatic Seat Cushions Prove Flight Worthiness
24 April 2007 09:30
After two years and 4,000 flight hours, Lantal's pneumatic seat cushions have proved their airworthiness in flight. At the same time, the pneumatic cushions have been advanced both in their technical functionality and in the area of certification. With two new partnerships and major ongoing projects, Lantal's innovative products are becoming crucial in major commercial aviation.
The pneumatic seat cushions have been showcasing their merits in a long-range single-class Airbus A319 CJ operated by the Italian airline eurofly for two years now, including some time as a VIP charter carrier operated by the National Air Service (NAS) of Saudi Arabia. The aircraft has been in service for about 4,000 flight hours and over 730 cycles without a single malfunction of Lantal's cushions.
Lantal's pneumatic cushion technology has been pushed forward on many fronts. Lantal is involved in developing all-pneumatic cushions for a novel business class fully-flat seat, to be launched commercially in early 2008. For the first time, the pneumatic cushions will include headrest, backrest (featuring Lantal's comfort-enhancing lumbar and massage system), seat bottom, and leg-rest.
The pneumatic cushions will play out all their advantages, providing low weight, passenger-controlled adaptive comfort, a full lifetime functionality without degradation of firmness, higher safety, and increased hygiene because no moisture is absorbed in the cushions.
POSITIVE 14G DOWN TESTING
Preliminary 14g down testing with Lantal's pneumatic seat cushions was carried out to obtain test data on the relative ranking and the expected behavior of Lantal's cushions.
The results are remarkable: the pneumatic cushions, when inflated, behave similar to high-end foam cushions. When deflated, Lantal's pneumatic cushions yield test results even better than those of foam cushions – they would also pass the 14g down test on a rigid structure, as lumbar loads were below 6.7kN. As expected, no damage to the pneumatic cushions, inflated or deflated, was observed.
With these outstanding results, the pneumatic technology has reached a further critical milestone on its path to commercialisation.
NEW PARTNERSHIPS FOR COMMERCIAL PNEUMATIC SEAT CUSHION SUCCESS
Lantal is proud to announce two new partnerships which will be essential in commercialising the pneumatic cushion technology.
Contour Premium Aircraft Seating is Lantal's next seat-manufacturing partner, with whom a new program for a major airline to fit all-pneumatic cushions onto a novel business-class seat is being developed and commercialised.
Furthermore, Dornier Technologie and Lantal have agreed to a strategic partnership to commercialise pneumatic components for the aviation and transportation industry. The aim is to jointly develop pneumatic components such as pumps, valves, controls, software and to manufacture them by Dornier Technologie. The distribution and marketing of these products will be conducted solely by Lantal as part of the pneumatic systems division's business.
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