AliceBluAero hits key approval milestones, reveals new business seats

As airlines seek alternatives to the major seat suppliers amid capacity, production and quality issues, Northern Ireland-based seatmaker AliceBluAero is making strides towards production of its first seat — and eyeing more.

Development testing is complete for its first seat, the narrowbody outward-facing herringbone Quantum, while the company is pivoting fast to the widebody retrofit market with a widebody version of Quantum. It’s also working on a second product line, Gemini, a forward-facing fully flat seat aimed both at 2-2-2 configurations on widebodies and on 2-2 layouts on narrowbodies.

A major milestone for AliceBluAero is a set of certification achievements for the Quantum fully flat herringbone product, which it has previously shown at the Aircraft Interiors Expo.

Luke Smith, vice president for engineering and head of airworthiness tells Runway Girl Network: “we recently just finished all of our development testing, which covered the 16g pitch and roll in both orientations, the 14g downwards and HIC. We’re very happy with how the development testing all went, and we are in the process now of proceeding into the certification process.”

Indeed, managing director Ryan McNeice adds, both HIC testing and the 14g downward loads were under half of the allowable, an impressive achievement. The next steps in the certification process will be under the UK CAA at fellow seat maker Mirus’ M-TEST facility in Norfolk in the east of England. While securing its Production Organisation Approval under part 21G, AliceBluAero geared itself towards the ramp-up capacity it expects to arrive in 2025 rather than the initial capacity of some 500 passenger seats per year that it can produce at present.

The model certainly seems to be appealing to prospective airline customers, not least in the context of much-discussed capacity and production issues with major suppliers across the industry. Many airlines, according to AliceBluAero, are being quoted two-plus year lead times for even a standard programme.

For AliceBluAero, says head of sales Dave Spalding, the selling point is “a level of customisation — it’s also complete flexibility. Literally, we’re prepared to work with an airline to develop a seat bespoke to them. We’ve offered that to many of the large airlines that have talked to us, and I think they’ve been really impressed with the fact that we’re prepared to actually work with them. We will be 100% focused on our launch customer, and they’ve really liked that messaging.”