2014 Passenger Experience Conference To Introduce A Dedicated Stream Focusing On MRO
December 10, 2013–The organisers of Aircraft Interiors Expo – Reed Exhibitions – has confirmed that the 2014 Passenger Experience Conference will include for the first time a stream dedicated to aircraft interiors Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO). Taking place on Monday 7 April at the CCH – Congress Center Hamburg – this addition clearly cements Reed Exhibition’s intention to support the professional growth and development of individuals within the aircraft interiors and passenger experience industry.
The stream, entitled ‘Protecting the Brand: cabin maintenance’, will be chaired by Mike Kotas, Director of Cabin Maintenance at Delta Air Lines and will focus on how airlines can avoid the pitfalls of spending too much money fixing poorly designed elements of its cabin and will consider strategies for ensuring that the cabin product is robust and sustainable throughout its lifecycle.
Vern Alg, Consultant for Aircraft Interiors Expo, said, “According to a recent forecast by Visiongain, the world commercial aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul market reached $48.8 billion in 2012. MRO is vital in not only ensuring the desired life expectancy of an aircraft, but it also has a direct correlation with passenger satisfaction”. Vern went on to say, “The traditional role of the MRO providers has also changed over the last few years as airlines opt for a total support function rather than a one-off approach. A vital component of this is ensuring engineers are included in the design stages to warrant a more straight-forward maintenance process throughout an aircraft’s operating shelf-life; historically this has not been the case. I’m really excited about this addition to the Passenger Experience Conference.”
Following the opening remarks the agenda will drill down and address ‘Designing for ease of future maintenance’. All too often the design of the cabin components are already procured before the maintenance team is asked for its input, so this session will debate how to insert the topic of maintenance into the design process, promote and educate cross communication on specific needs, in order to achieve the panacea of design and development teams actively obtaining sign-off from maintenance teams.
The agenda will then focus on the relationship between the cabin and brand values of the airline. ‘Setting the standard – keeping the condition of the cabin up to spec’, will offer conference delegates the opportunity to listen in on industry experts imparting their knowledge on how to ensure a cabin’s interior is a fresh embodiment of brand values, and importantly how to sustain this on each journey, for every passenger, over a long period of time.
Materials and their reliability play a key role in MRO and the final session will look at ‘Improved products for wear resistance’.
The Passenger Experience Conference will open on Monday 7th April 2014 with two plenary sessions looking at both ‘The Future for Passenger Experience’ and ‘Challenging the status quo – new directions for the passenger experience’. The afternoon programme will then split into four breakout sessions: ‘Protecting the Brand: cabin maintenance’; ‘Inflight Entertainment and Connectivity: a voyage of discovery and opportunity’; ‘Hospitality & Service – making the onboard experience memorable’; and ‘The Cabin: getting smarter about space and comfort’.
For more information please visit www.aircraftinteriorsexpo.com
'Future–proofing' the IFE installation means providing an onboard network with sufficient bandwidth that the airline will never have to tear apart their airplane to re-wire to install upgrades. Fiber-to-the-Seat™ provides a fiber optics network running at a gigabit per second – High-definition video is only the beginning – who knows what the hot, killer apps will be 10-20 years from now?!”