PrivatAir Is Refurbishing its BBJ for the Popular Newark-Munich Run
The revamped BBJ should be ready for Lufthansa's
Newark-Munich route in early January, says PrivatAir CEO Greg Thomas. The
service has proven so popular that no one wanted to take the aircraft out of
service for the refit.
And the refit has been a challenge in itself.
Take getting power to the seats. "I thought we could just
run the wires under the carpet," says Thomas. But no. The wiring in a BBJ runs
along the cabin roof, meaning the whole interior and side panels have to be
removed to put it in.
Then finding seats isn't easy. Those made for widebody
business class are too wide to fit inside a BBJ fuselage, and there is not much
demand from the airlines for that standard of seat for their narrowbodies.
Seatmakers are sold out, quoting two years for delivery as airliner deliveries
continue apace outside the U.S., so they put a premium on tailoring specialized
products.
The BBJ is the only one in the fleet without power to the
seats, but it will emerge with them all plugged in, with sockets for laptops.
Once the seats are wired, connectivity is possible.
Lufthansa is a partner with Connexion by Boeing, so it is well connected when
it comes to getting Internet on board. The downside is the cost of about $1.3
million per aircraft, Thomas explains— and that is the same for an A340 or 747
where far more people can use it as it is for the BBJ.
"Connexion by Boeing is quite simple; it's just costly,"
Thomas says. "With a smaller aircraft it would obviously take longer to
amortize the cost."
Wiring will open another can of worms— the inflight
telephone. "This is the next step that all the manufacturers are banging on
about— when can we have mobile phones on the airplane?" Thomas says. "Can you
imagine the noise of 25 American businessmen tapping into their voice mail
mid-Atlantic? How annoying will that be? Even on the Heathrow Express half
train is a quiet zone where you cannot use a telephone— and we're trying our
hardest to get it on board transatlantic airplanes?"
Should we go back to the future and emphasize quality of
downtime as the ultimate bonus for the business traveler?
"Funny enough, that is almost the concept of the Boeing
787," says Thomas, citing its "touchy-feely" technology of soft contours, mood
lighting and automatic window shades that replicate your own time zone so as to
cut down on jet lag. Aromatherapy oils in the air con system? Why not?
"Going forward we will see much more of this in the
next-generation airplanes," he says, noting that a next-generation 737 or A319
replacement will also bring a high-tech BBJ or ACJ capable, perhaps, of flying
nonstop from London to Tokyo.
