Gallery: Teague Unveils First ‘Floating’ Furniture

Unlike all aircraft seating flying today, which use floor-mounted seat tracks, design and innovation company’s Elevate is the first cabin to use sidewall attachment points to suspend suite furniture in the air … so it looks like it is floating. This approach offers passengers more space, privacy, and comfort in a cabin which looks more like an upmarket hotel as opposed to an aircraft. It has some important advantages for airlines too, especially around sustainability.

By utilizing mounted fixtures in the sidewall that eliminate restrictive structures around the monitor, side-furniture, and ottoman, the ‘Elevate’ concept increases the bed size, living space and stowage capacity for every passenger – providing a larger floorspace and promoting an expansive living space.

While the Elevate concept has been designed to resolve major pain points for passengers, it also has several unique and important advantages for airlines, including consistent experience—the creation of a narrowbody passenger experience that matches that of a widebody aircraft; market competitive—the reverse herringbone layout is familiar to passengers and regulatory bodies, and achieves market-competitive density (no reduction in passenger numbers) and seat pitch; lightweight cabin—a significantly lighter suite structures make every flight more fuel-efficient and therefore more sustainable; and a simple & efficient solid state design that reduces the need for moving parts (e.g., suite doors) and the associated engineering cost and complexity.

Teague senior director-airline experience Anthony Harcup said, “At a time when passenger wellbeing and sustainability are industry priorities, ‘Elevate’ heralds in a new generation of beautiful, simplified cabin products that will enable airlines to deliver exceptional experiences for their passengers with the economic efficiency that these smaller aircraft were designed to deliver.”

NORDAM CEO Meredith Siegfried Madden said, “By revolutionizing how seats and other monuments attach to an aircraft, Nbrace recruits previously wasted space, transforming it into new aesthetic possibilities and dramatically improved passenger comfort, space and privacy.”