SEKISUI SPI and Butterfly Flexible Seating Solutions, along with Tapis and MGRFoamtex have formed a collaboration to help bring the Butterfly flexible seat solution to the cabin, planning to debut the next iteration of the seat prototype at the Aircraft Interiors Expo 2020 in Hamburg.
Through the partnership SEKISUI SPI will collaborate with Butterfly to develop customer-centric material solutions using KYDEX Thermoplastics, which the company suggest are lighter, safer, stronger and more recyclable than alternative materials.
The agreement between the two companies sprang from discussions following the Red Cabin Summit in Seattle in June and was announced at the Red Cabin event in London this week. Speaking at the Aircraft Cabin Innovation Summit in London, Ronn Cort, president and COO of SEKISUI SPI said: “We are excited to help innovative startups like Butterfly bring their disruptive ideas into the market.”
“That’s the mission of our appLab™, an innovation center where ‘what ifs?’ become fully-fledged projects,” he continued.
The Butterfly flexible seating solution allows for an instant transformation between premium economy/regional business class and long-haul flatbed suites.
Lars Rinne, Butterfly’s co-founder and commercial director, commented: “With our partners’ know-how, we can put Butterfly in the position to be competitive with both standard recliners as well as business class lie-flat suite. We are in the process of creating a seat that we are happy to sell, airlines are thrilled to buy, and passengers are delighted to sit in.”
