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As glorious a testimony to the art of sensual gratification as it may be, the royal barge interior is not designed to really support people doing actual work. I know it can be done, and I know people who have done it, but that's because of their personal persistence, not because of good design. The corporate airline interior is no better. It's just seats in rows, facing forward - contrary to what the data tell us makes a more crash-worthy interior. Unless you have one of those special jets that never, ever crash, this should be a concern. These aircraft are intended to efficiently shuttle employees from site to site, to do whatever work is to be done and to do it Off The Aircraft. They are not designed to support passengers working on board. They are not designed to support a team. This may seem strange, but these aircraft function only as corporate airliners, buses with wings, really. So far as I can tell, there are few, if any, jets with interiors designed to support people doing actual work, other than passing drinks and socializing. I have yet to see one, though I'm told they exist. Perhaps the disconnect is in our differing definitions of “work.” Inside work If we send our people by corporate jet, they can work while on board! That has been one of the great rationales for buying a corporate jet - en route productivity. For en route productivity to take place, the passengers need more than reclining leather seats. They need a place for laptops, power outlets, maybe a printer, a scanner, and a fax machine. Teams of people need a conference table, someplace they can spread out a bit. This is not something they can do on one of those folding tray tables; I have tried it myself. Working people also need connectivity to the rest of the world, whether by phone or broadband. If you think about it, sufficient bandwidth to the airplane gets you both voice and data. Why we would have separate systems for each is a bit of a mystery. That's the sort of thing I usually attribute to markers. Having neither system on board is the sort of thing I attribute to accountants. I am not opposed to comfort on board a corporate jet, though I like to draw the line right before sybaritic. Too much middle-class Calvinism in my make up, I suppose. That said, the business jets I have personally seen range from tasteful to utilitarian, though I'm certain there are some spectacular ones out there that I have not seen. Still, none are designed to fully support working on board. That bothers me. If we are not going to work while on the airplane, can we please stop talking about en route productivity? Really, there is no difference flying on a corporate jet and flying on a commercial airliner if we go on strike the moment we leave the building. Save the company a little money; fly commercial. Send the savings to the shareholders like we say we should. OK, I laughed, too. Up front The cockpit, or flight deck, if you prefer, needs a bit of work. I don't mean switching to an all EFIS cockpit, though I do favor that, nor do I mean adding synthetic vision, though I also favor that, nor do I mean adding a HUD, though I favor that as well. Those things are important, without a doubt, as are well trained and highly skilled pilots. What I have in mind, really, is that the current generation of business jet flight decks do not allow the crew to safely eat a meal. There is very little room on most business jets, so it isn't like they can retire to the crew lounge and have a quiet meal there. Nor can they just go all day without eating. You may have noticed that a lot of business aviation aircraft are designed for very long range, and can be in the air for six hours, eight hours, or more. It is poor practice for the crew to not eat during that time (low blood sugar levels during the most hazardous part of the flight makes no sense), and it is less than safe for the crew to eat their meal over the yoke or from the glare shield or wolf their meal down right before a six hour flight. In short, there have been some poor design choices made and they need to be fixed. More is at stake here than a stained uniform. The galley The more I learn about the galley situation on the aircraft, the more I am horrified. The industry standards around galleys needs to improve. You wouldn't believe the things I have seen. OK, given my likely audience, maybe you would. For example, I have seen a sink smaller than my laptop that is used to hand wash dishes. With water from the aircraft's water tanks. I don't mean to shock anyone, but that water isn't really safe to drink. What makes you think it is safe for food preparation? Washing dishes with questionable water does not make the dishes clean, appearances to the contrary. We need to work on this. By “work on this,” I mean order and install the water filtration systems that are already on the market. This doesn't require huge R&D budgets, the solution is already here. And get a bigger sink while you're in there. And can we please stop treating the galley like a decorative sideboard in the chalet? Think of the galley as a food preparation machine, a commercial kitchen. The biggest single complaint I have about galleys is a lack of storage space. Yes, I can hear flight attendants around the world cheering this statement! It is a fact. But, I'm not talking about drawers for freezer bags, china storage, and whatnot. I am talking about the major reason we even have a galley on board the aircraft. The food. There is no place to safely store the food in the galley. Nor much of any place else. See any refrigerators last time you were on board? Me, neither. Food abuse Do you have any idea what happens when the temperature of the food exceeds 40F? Do you have any idea what can happen to your gastrointestinal system as a direct result? Let's say you were supposed to have oysters on the half shell. A fine dish. But, it can be deadly after sitting at room temperature for a couple of hours. Yes, I know about cooler bags and gel-ice, but even that is still risky in terms of food safety. The professional aviation caterer can properly chill and wrap the food, load the cooler bags cold and store the loaded bags in the cooler at the FBO. These people are professionals doing what they can to minimize the risks of food-borne illness. There is no telling what you will get from some random hotel or restaurant. Their food is fine on their premises, but their processes are not designed to support safe transportation and reheating. That things are as good as they are is a huge testimonial to the professionalism of both the flight attendants and the caterers. But, let's not get cocky. The fact remains that food destined to be served to our passengers on board the airplane is piled hither and yon in a valiant attempt to get it out of the way of those passengers, yet reasonably convenient to the crew members who prepare and serve it. In the larger jets, the forward lav gets pressed into service as a food storage facility. In those less luxuriously equipped, the food often gets piled in front of the only exit door, or behind passenger seats, and occasionally gets strapped into a seat like a passenger. How attractive is that? We can do better. We must do better. If we don't do better on our own initiative, someone is going to regulate us into doing better, and they will have right on their side. The insanity When you look at it logically, it is insane to spend tens of millions of dollars on an aircraft that can comfortably fly above 50,000 feet at transonic speeds, for thousands and thousands of miles, but hasn't got a place to safely stow a sandwich. We as an industry must face this fact and revisit the design of the interior, in particular, the galley. I know the objections. “We might lose a seat!” Or, “It's a weight penalty!” Right. It is so much better to sicken more people at a lower fuel cost. It's an efficiency argument of sorts. The reality is that our designs are not balanced. We have allocated insufficient space to things that we know our customers do and we know this because we have made huge efforts to partially equip them. We need to fix this. More than one cost Redesigning the galley to support safe food handling processes is neither trivial nor cheap. I understand that. I also understand something about the cost of refusing to do so. By the way, if you think redoing the galley is horribly expensive, try redesigning the cockpit. But, I digress. Imagine a sports team, for example, contenders in their league, and during the playoffs they all come down with some minor food-related illness. Not even enough to cause the classic ugly symptoms, but enough to put them off their game. What's the cost of a championship loss? What's the cost if your CEO isn't at peak capability? Or your VP of sales? What's the opportunity cost to the firm for refusing to update the galley to support safe food handling on board? We are back to flying commercial, aren't we? At least then you know who to blame. Here in business aviation, we refuse to go back to the same caterer if someone comes down with something, which is kind of nuts since there is no way to tell whether the caterer was to blame. There is going to be a great deal of hand wringing on this subject, I know. We are dealing with human beings, after all. Many people will dither and delay until either new regulations come down, or someone dies, maybe several someones. Then we as an industry will be slammed, and rightly so. To me, it makes a great deal more sense to get in front of the curve and do what so clearly needs to be done. In the long run, it will save both lives and money. Terry Drinkard is currently consulting on an aviation start-up. His interests and desire are being involved in cool developments around airplanes and in the aviation industry. Usually working as a contract heavy structures engineer, he has held positions with Boeing and Gulfstream Aerospace and has years of experience in the MRO world. Terry’s areas of specialty are aircraft design, development, manufacturing, maintenance, and modification; lean manufacturing; Six-sigma; worker-directed teams; project management; organization development and start-ups. Terry welcomes your comments, questions or feedback. You may contact him via terry.drinkard@blueskynews.aero Other recent articles by Terry Drinkard:
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