Multi-million dollar aircraft interiors are by and
large—well, boring. "Aircraft are full of examples of how not to do it," says
Jan Nieberle, the industrial engineer in charge of Lufthansa Technik's Project
U interior design consultancy.
"VIPs tend to choose stereotypes of luxury—veneers and
marble" rather than how their money can reflect something they really like.
Often they are too busy to have thought about it. A
completion shop will show what is possible by what it's done before and what
it's used to doing, the VIP chooses the color and the sound system, signs the
deal and the work begins. Project U doesn't even have a mockup, so as not to
load a customer with preconceptions.
Two years in, the outside world is still asking, "So what is
Project U?" It isn't a product, or a program with a final goal. Rather it is an
in-house consultancy for VIPs and airlines that will match the best designers
it can find in any industry to a customer's individual tastes, and then call on
Lufthansa Technik's aerospace engineering capabilities to turn them into
reality.
Interior designers in other industries don't know about
technical innovations in aircraft cabins, engineering or certification, so they
don't do cabin interiors and VIPs don't go seeking them out. Project U brings
them together.
Latest partner is Design Q, whose client list includes
Jaguar and Virgin Atlantic (for its Upper Class cabin). Last year Conran &
Partners became the first design house to sign up.
Project U is seen by Lufthansa Technik as a differentiator
that can win it business for its VIP completion shops.
That strategy has paid off with five or six customers to
date, ranging from a Learjet 55 to a complete redesign of the interior of an
MD-11, which arrived in Hamburg in September.
