Inside the overhaul of Air NZ’s tired Dreamliner cabin

Wednesday, 4 December 2024

They’re barely a decade old but Air New Zealand’s fleet of 14 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners are in need of an upgrade. Business class is dated, there aren’t enough premium economy seats and the foam in the economy seats is indented with the shape of a thousand bums. Explainer Editor Lloyd Burr flew to Singapore’s ST Engineering to see the first aircraft being retrofitted with brand new cabins.

On July 10 in 2014, I was lucky enough to be on the delivery flight of Air New Zealand’s first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. The airline was the first in the world to receive the aircraft variant, which had been handed over in a lavish ceremony at the US manufacturer’s factory in Seattle. I was working at RadioLIVE at the time and I remember being impressed by the three different hard products (aviation jargon for the actual seats) that had been installed.

Finally after six or so years of delay, they had their new planes which were fitted with a similar standard of product as their 777 fleet. Business Premier featured a herringbone seating arrangement, premium economy’s seat was an off-the-shelf design, as was economy which featured the SkyCouch too. It was brand new, it smelled great, and was a huge step up from the offering on the Boeing 767s it would replace.

But time hasn’t been kind on the Dreamliner’s cabins. Other airlines have rolled out game-changing hard products like Qatar’s Q-Suites and Singapore’s first and business classes. Emirates has a bar and even showers. Japan Airlines and ANA are rolling out huge upgrades too. These global airline behemoth’s were leaving our national carrier behind and if you’ve even been on any business class review sites or Facebook pages, the fussy business clientele were not saying nice things about Air New Zealand’s current business seat.

The airline has been doing painstaking research and development at their innovation hub called Hangar22. It’s named as such because 2022 was the deadline for their creations to be rolled out. But along came Covid-19 and it killed that plan. It saw planes parked in deserts, aircraft deliveries deferred and threw the global supply chain for everything into turmoil. Air New Zealand moved its next new 787-9 delivery to 2026 but that created a conundrum: the upgrade of the existing fleet couldn’t wait until then.

So for the first time ever, Air New Zealand decided to upgrade the cabins in the existing planes before they’d been installed in a brand new airframe. Usually it’s the other way around: the new cabins get installed in the new planes, technicians learn how it’s done, the supply chain and processes get streamlined before it’s rolled out on older planes.

That’s where Singapore’s ST Engineering comes in. They’ve been overhauling aircraft for decades and Air New Zealand chose them to do the work, watched over by a reluctant-but-approving Boeing, and Air New Zealand’s technicians. And the airline invited me to check out the progress in Singapore.

The Cost

It’s budgeted to cost around $35 million to retrofit each of the 14 Dreamliners, meaning the cost of the whole refit programme is nearly half a billion dollars. A further $3 billion will pay for eight new Dreamliners, which will be both the -9 variant and the -10 variant (which is five metres longer). The airline has pencilled in another 12 787s on top of that (called ‘options’).

The carrier’s chief financial officer Richard Thompson says the upgrade will pay for itself in the long run.

“The interiors on these things typically last anywhere between seven and nine years and by the time we're finished calculating the cost, we're just about ready to do another one,” he says.

It’s hard to put a hard figure on it because there are multiple currencies.

“So some of it we're paying for in Yen like the galleys and lavs, and some of it's in Euro like some of the seats you've seen this afternoon. So in New Zealand dollars and sort of in the round it works out at about 35 million on a plane.”

Delivery

The first retrofitted plane will be delivered from Singapore in mid-Jan 2025, and after a month of crew getting used to the new layout and signing it off, it will have its first revenue flight mid-Feb.

Chief executive Greg Foran was part of the group touring the aircraft and says getting to this stage has been a marathon effort.

“We're doing it at a time when the industry is still really in a bit of turmoil from Covid. So getting all the pieces - whether it's the wiring kits that go in here or getting the seats manufactured, even simple things like getting toilet seats - is a real challenge,” he says.

“One of the things I’m really proud of here is the way that we’ve dug deep with our customers to find out what they really want,” says Foran.

Ripping the guts out

From the outside, aircraft ZK-NZH (aviation jargon: its registration code) looked perfectly normal as I climbed the yellow engineering stairs to the main door. But that’s where the normality stopped. It was like walking into a demolition site. The floor was exposed, some wall panels were missing. The overhead lockers were gone. There were no seats. There were wires and cables hanging down. Temporary pipes were pumping fresh air inside to take the edge off the Singaporean humidity. Tape and foam with vivid scribbles adorned a lot of parts. For the most part, it was just an empty shell.

Foran likened it to a renovation of a house: “You gut it, and then rebuild it”. And that’s what this task force was halfway through.

All the old seats had been removed. Many components have been recycled, like the inflight entertainment screens which have been sent back to Panasonic. Other elements are awaiting their fate whether it’s upcycling or reuse by other airlines. Some may end up at a trendy plane-themed bar, who knows.

Once the seats and carpet had been ripped up, the 52 carbon fibre floor panels - which are structural - needed to be pulled up. All the drill holes from where services ran or seats were affixed had to be plugged using carbon fibre, then certified, then reinstalled. The new carpet has been laid - it’s nylon, not wool (They couldn’t get their hands on enough light-weight New Zealand merino wool, I’m told).

The galleys were pulled out and either cleaned or replaced entirely. All of the toilets have been replaced, especially the ones in the centre of the economy cabin where the electrolytes in the urine (that had ended up on the floor) had corroded the floor. The basins are new too because calcite scum had built up on them and turned them a funny colour.

New fibre broadband cables and associated tech - including a new satellite wifi system - have been installed. Much of them are still exposed and it’s mindboggling how on earth anyone can make sense of where they all go and what they do.

As you’d imagine, there was a lot of gunk. Nine years worth of dust, rubbish, lost lollies, hair, and other gross stuff that has built up in nooks, crannies, filters, and impossible to reach places. That was all removed and binned.

Kiwi Ingenuity

The three Kiwis charged with the retrofit are the most salt-of-the-Earth people. Angie McIvor has been with the airline since she was 17 and while I don’t know her age now, she has a few decades under her belt. She knows every bolt, rivet, and carpet fibre. Her colleagues Thomas Hill and resident engineer Mike Grimwood were walking encyclopedias about anything to do with aviation.

“Ultra long haul is is a big thing for our customers. Most other airlines have a maximum flight time of around 10 hours, but for us we're going to be going to New York with this product, not on this aircraft, but with this product,” says McIvor.

“We need that to be comfortable for 18 hours, which is significant,” she says.

Standardising the fleet layout

Currently, Air New Zealand’s 787 fleet has two different cabin layouts. The first nine aircraft were delivered with 302 seats: 18 business, 21 premium economy, and 263 economy (of which 16 rows had SkyCouch). The next five aircraft saw a higher premium density with a total of 275 seats: 27 business, 33 premium economy, and 215 economy (with 14 rows of SkyCouch).

The retrofit will see all 14 aircraft have the same configuration with a total of 272 seats:

• 4x Business Premier Luxe

• 22 Business Premier

• 33 premium economy

• 213 economy (with 13 SkyCouch rows)

The brand new seats

The seats aren’t exactly off-the-shelf. They’ve either been entirely designed from scratch or heavily modified from an existing offering. And interestingly, each seat is made by a different manufacturer in a different country.

During the tour, the only seats that had begun installation were the economy seats. The premium economy seats had been delivered and I got a sneak peak at them in ST Engineering’s storage room. The business product hasn’t been delivered yet so I didn’t get to see that in the flesh, disappointingly.

New features across all classes

• Every seat gets bluetooth connectivity, which means you’ll be able to pair your headphones with your screen and not have to worry about wires.

• Every seat gets both USB-A and USB-C charging ports, so you won’t have to worry if you’ve brought an old cable or a new one.

• Every seat gets more storage. Even in economy, the number of pockets is impressive, and there’s even a nic-nak shelf for your phone or sunnies.

• Every seat gets way bigger screens than the current ones.

Business Premier LUXE

This is an entirely new cabin class, brought in due the demand for an even more premium experience from elite travellers. It’s essentially Air New Zealand’s response to the first class suite offerings from other full-service airlines.

There are four LUXE seats in a four abreast configuration at the very front of the aircraft. It was designed by Air New Zealand’s Hangar22 crew and manufactured in Wales by Safran Seats. It is the same seat as Business Premier but with 35% more room, a guest seat, a sliding door, and a privacy screen. There’s also a bigger table for dual dining, as well as luxury blankets and cushions. See below for the rest of the features.

Business Premier

It is now four-abreast instead of three, but bizarrely they’ve made the seats more spacious and the bed wider - I don’t know how but they have! Gone is the awkward angled arrangement where you’re weirdly looking at your neighbour and take-off thrusts you sideways into the seat. Passengers are facing forward, albeit at a very small angle and a privacy screen makes the space your own. If you’re travelling with a companion, the divider between the two middle seats can be lowered so you can chat (or hold hands, or clink a glass of bubbles).

The IFE screen has more than doubled from the current size, from 11” to 24” and it’s also HD with 4k. The seat itself can be adjusted in numerous ways, whether it’s lumbar support, backrest, headrest, or armrests. There’s a three-point seatbelt instead of the bulky two-point airbag ones. When you want a nap, you can convert the bed by yourself without the need to stand up, although you’ll be given the same thick memory foam mattress topper so it’s probably worth it. The bed is 2m long so even the All Blacks will be able to fit.

There’s wireless charging for your phone (which you can sync to the IFE and use as a remote or second screen) and if you need to plug in your laptop charger to do some work, there’s an AC plug too. There’s more storage spaces too, including for your shoes - and even a special place to hang your headphones. You can even customise the mood lighting.

Premium Economy

Gone is the invasive recline from the person in front but to achieve this, they’ve made the risky call to bring back the rigid hard-shell outer, with a sliding seat inside it (Cathay Pacific used a similar design in economy a decade ago and it was the most uncomfortable 12 hours I’ve ever had on a plane, so hopefully design has come a long way since then).

It’s based on an off-the-shelf design from Germany’s ZIM Aero but the Hangar22 team spent 18 months customising and refining it. Most of this time was spent trying to find the right type of foam in order to get the perfect firmness and thickness for long haul travel (the Germans were a bit perplexed, I’m told). The footrest is no longer built into the legrest, but instead it folds down from the seat in front. Taller travellers will be happy with the huge foot well under the seat in front which combined with the lack of recline into your space, should allow for a good sleep. The seat features two solid privacy wings that wrap around the headspace, giving the feeling like you’re in your own wee cocoon (with your own reading light built in). You have a bigger screen too - 15.6” instead of the current 11” and the tray table (which is much bigger and far more sturdy than the incumbent) has a special slot for your tablet or phone to rest if you want to dual-screen as well.

There’s a plethora of places to store your stuff: on the insides of the seat, the outside of the seat, between the seats, in the seat in front. The charging ports, including an AC socket, are in the arm rests. Passengers will also have access to a new feature called the Sky Pantry. This is exactly what it sounds like - a pantry in the sky where you can help yourself to snacks and cold drinks without having to wait for cabin crew.

Economy

These are a modified off-the-shelf product made in the US by HAECO (which is now owned and being merged with ZIM Aero). There are two sub-classes with economy: Economy Stretch and Skycouch. Economy Stretch is the first three rows (and some in the fourth, totalling 30 seats) of the economy cabin with 35” pitch between the seats instead of the rest of economy’s 31” and passengers here get premium headphones too. Skycouch will be available in 13 outer rows and remains unchanged (for the uninitiated, there’s a leg rest that fold up across three seats, a memory foam mattress topper is added with some pillows and blankets, becoming a wee bed, or ‘cuddle class’ as some call it).

The upholstery is a blend of New Zealand wool and there’s a tonne of storage for all your stuff. The biggest upgrade is the size of the IFE screen. It’s 13.3” instead of the current 9” (which makes it bigger than the current business screens which are 11”). The recline is 4” but it also slides within itself adding an extra 1”.

Passengers will also have access to the Sky Pantry, as outlined above.

(Lloyd Burr flew to Singapore with Air NZ.)