Flying-V beds nominated for Crystal Cabin Award 2020

The organisation of the Crystal Cabin Awards, the international prize for innovations in the field of aircraft cabins and passenger experience, has nominated the design by Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) students for collapsible beds for the Flying-V concept in the category ‘University’. The winners will be announced at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg on 31 March.

The category ‘University’ aims to highlight innovations for making flying more comfortable or ecologically friendly. The Flying-V is a design for a highly energy efficient long distance aeroplane. It is a collaborative project between TU Delft’s faculties of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) and Aerospace Engineering (AE), and KLM. The goal of the design is make aviation more sustainable. Unique for this aircraft design is that both passengers and luggage take their place inside the wings of the aeroplane.

For the Flying-V, a team of students - led by Professor Peter Vink - designed several seating concepts to make specifically economy class more comfortable and light weight, in order to reduce fuel consumption of the plane.

The students developed collapsible beds for the economy class cabin that effectively use the oval cabin space at the rear side of the wing. This configuration makes it possible for three passengers to lay down horizontally in the same amount of space they would normally use for seating. By allowing the middle bed to slide up, and half of the bottom bed to fold down, this triple-height bunk bed can easily be converted into three seats for take-off and landing, which is a requirement for quick evacuation.