Inside Airbus' Super-Cool Airspace A320 Cabin, Coming Soon to JetBlue
At the 2016 Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, Airbus unveiled its new Airspace cabin for the A330neo. That completely overhauled cabin design offers a high-tech experience through and through, from the slick mood lighting with etched overhead features to futuristic lavatories and much larger overhead bins.
Tuesday at the APEX Expo in Long Beach, we learned that Airspace will now be making its way to Airbus' single-aisle A320 Family, launching first with JetBlue. I'll dig into the improvements shortly, but first, take a tour of the new cabin in the video below:
We've heard repeatedly at APEX that when passengers evaluate cabin comfort, spaciousness tops the list of criteria — high ceilings, legroom and other amenities rank far above, say, seat width. Airspace accomplishes this by bringing a high-tech international-cabin feel to a narrow-body plane.
Another enhancement is the industry's largest overhead bins — they can fit 60% more carry-on luggage than older models.
As you can see from the Airbus mock-up, bags fit best when stored vertically — and there's room for four in each bin section.
A new window design with a larger bezel gives the impression of a larger viewing space, even with the smaller A320 windows (compared with those on Boeing's 737s).
The seat width remains 18 inches, which is wider than you'll find on many other narrow-body planes, including older models of the Boeing 737. Note that all cabin features aren't final — the seats, for example, will likely change significantly by the time they arrive on a JetBlue plane.
The full Airspace cabin is expected to launch on new JetBlue A320s and A321s starting in 2020, though the expanded overhead bins should be available as soon as 2019. And should the carrier choose to launch transatlantic service, Airspace will certainly be a boon with narrow-body flyers.
