How Virgin Atlantic Uses Light to Make Its New Plane a Superstar

[gallery ids="143857,143858,143859,143860,143861,143862,143863,143864,143865,143855,143856"] It’s the age-old question: What do you get the birthday girl who has everything? If you’re Virgin Atlantic, you get her good lighting. Named “Birthday Girl” to celebrate 30 years since the airline’s inaugural flight on the competitive trans-Atlantic London to New York route, this new Virgin Atlantic Dreamliner embodies a new age of aircraft interiors design: the age of enlightenment. As the race inside the aircraft interiors space intensifies, options for differentiation and in-flight product innovation are limited by the small subset of interiors manufacturers and suppliers certified for airline cabin products. For trend-setters, like Virgin Atlantic, well-established high standards make setting a higher bar for design a challenge. The airline has overcome these limitations by using the oldest theater trick in the book: put good lighting on the star of the show. In this case, the star is Birthday Girl, the cabin is her stage, and the crew are the players. The stage is set with high quality props. The upper class has 31 Zodiac UCS3 seats, angled to make the most of the extra room the Dreamliner affords. Virgin Atlantic has passed these space benefits on to passengers. “The 787 is only 6 inches wider than the A340-600/330 aircraft from Airbus,” says Nik Lusardi, Virgin Altantic’s design manager for customer experience, “but the net effect of the cabin design itself, the way that Boeing have really maximized the space inside the cabin, means you can actually push the seats further out. You can give space back to other parts of the seat and increase the bed length. You can increase the whole perception of space in the cabin.” Larger windows, vaulted ceilings, advanced air filtration, quieter engines and air condition, better humidity contr