Personalized Tech, Same Old Seats? The Challenge of Keeping Airlines Unique

The integration gap between seats and screens is finally being closed, but airlines risk commoditizing their premium market with cookie-cutter seats.

For better or worse, our lives are lived through screens now. However, only one of aviation’s major seat-makers has an inflight entertainment (IFE) manufacturer in-house. And even then, the integration of its products into its seats has been glacial.

True integration between aircraft, seats, and those glossy 4K screens are only starting to reap rewards in the very latest cabins.

For example, controlling the seat — and your environment — from the screen, watching a movie with your travel companion, seeing at-a-glance which lavatories are occupied, and indicators for inflight Wi-Fi. Much of this is class-independent, with the same IFE system throughout the plane.

Daniel Clucas, founder of design agency Studio ID, predicts that changes to seating as we approach the end of the decade could in