Possibilities to improve the aircraft interior comfort experience P. Vink a, d, * , C. Bazley b , I. Kamp c , M. Blok d a Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands b Jimconna, 5966 County Road 109, Carbondale, CO 81623, USA c BMW AG, Knorrstrasse 147, D-80788 München, Germany d TNO, P.O. Box 718, 2130 AS Hoofddorp, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 15 December 2009 Accepted 31 May 2011 Keywords: Cabin comfort Legroom Passengers’ opinion Aircraft interiors abstract Comfort plays an increasingly important role in the interior design of airplanes. Although ample research has been conducted on airplane design technology, only a small amount of public scientific information is available addressing the passenger’s opinion. In this study, more than 10,000 internet trip reports and 153 passenger interviews were used to gather opinions about aspects which need to be improved in order to design a more comfortable aircraft interior. The results show clear relationships between comfort and legroom, hygiene, crew attention and seat/ personal space. Passengers rate the newer planes significantly better than older ones, indicating that attention to design for comfort has proven effective. The study also shows that rude flight attendants and bad hygiene reduce the comfort experience drastically and that a high comfort rating is related to higher “fly again” values. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. Comfort attracts passengers Today, people are constantly on the move, travelling for many reasons, e.g., business, leisure and family visits. Travelling by plane is growing and opportunistic for airliners. According to Brauer (2004), airliners can increase their financial margin by reducing maintenance costs. However, a reduction of 14% of the maintenance costs results in a 1% margin. Similarly an increase of airline passengers of 1% results also in almost a 1% margin. In order to attract more passengers, data are needed to determine the selec- tion behaviour of passengers, according to Brauer (2004). It appears that passengers first select on point-to-point transport, time and price, then on aspects like marketing (frequent flyer programmes), followed by comfort, past experiences and delays. For short distances the delay aspect is more important as opposed to long distance travel where the comfort aspect plays a more important role. This paper focuses on possibilities to increase comfort and the potential marginal benefits airlines may gain by providing more comfort to passengers, thereby attracting more passengers. According to Richards (1980) passenger comfort is clearly a key variable in research on user acceptance of transportation systems, it is related to passenger’s satisfaction and the willingness to use the system again. 1.2. Everyone has a comfort opinion Comfort has many aspects. In a previous literature study (Vink, 2005) the MEDLINE database showed 261 papers with comfort in the title between April 1993 and April 2003. By far most of these (140 out of 261) concern climate or thermal comfort. Other areas of study are effects of medicine or nursing (pain/patient comfort) and physical comfort (28 out of 261 papers); these include research regarding seating, posture, physical loading, and foot pressure measurements. The context of comfort does differ. However, there is a general notion in the word comfort. Comfort is described as ‘freedom from pain, well-being’ in Dutch dictionaries like the Van Dale 2000. In these dictionaries comfort is also translated as convenience of the interior. Many people associate comfort with the interior. In scientific literature comfort can be a pleasant state of physiological, psychological and physical harmony between a human being and the environment or a sense of subjective well- being. According to De Looze et al. (2003) there are many defini- tions, but one point is not really under debate: comfort is a subjective experience. A product in itself can never be * Corresponding author. TNO, P.O. Box 718, 2130 AS Hoofddorp, The Netherlands. Tel.: þ31 23 554 95 90; fax: þ31 23 554 93 05. E-mail addresses: peter.vink@tno.nl, p.vink@tudelft.nl (P. Vink), cbazley@ jimconna.com (C. Bazley), matthias.franz@bmw.de (I. Kamp), merle.blok@tno.nl (M. Blok). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Ergonomics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo 0003-6870/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2011.06.011 Applied Ergonomics 43 (2012) 354e359