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Design & Engineering

The Airport Seat Has Become A Power Station

L005: The Airport Seat Has Become a Power Station

Twenty years ago, passengers arrived at an airport with a boarding pass, a wallet and perhaps a mobile phone. Today, many of us arrive carrying a small collection of varying battery percentages.

Phones, laptops, tablets, headphones and smartwatches have become part of the way we travel and keeping them powered has fundamentally changed what passengers expect from the spaces in which they wait.

For airport seating, that means the job description has changed too. Providing somewhere comfortable to sit is still fundamental. But increasingly, passengers also expect somewhere to work, connect and charge their devices — preferably without leaving their seat to search the terminal for a power socket.

For Zoeftig, the interesting challenge isn’t simply how much power can be added to a seating system. It’s how well it can be integrated. One current example is the Vista SmartHub Power Bar, which integrates power directly into the passenger seating environment.

Multiply a handful of charging points across hundreds or thousands of seats and power quickly becomes an infrastructure consideration. Positioning, accessibility, cable management, maintenance and the ability to accommodate changing charging technologies all become part of the design. And most importantly, the technology shouldn’t compromise the reason the seating is there in the first place.

For Zoeftig, the interesting challenge isn’t simply how much power can be added to a seating system. It’s how well it can be integrated.

Multiply a handful of charging points across hundreds or thousands of seats and power quickly becomes an infrastructure consideration. Positioning, accessibility, cable management, maintenance and the ability to accommodate changing charging technologies all become part of the design. And most importantly, the technology shouldn’t compromise the reason the seating is there in the first place.

Passengers shouldn’t have to crawl underneath seats looking for sockets. Tables shouldn’t become collections of cables and chargers. And adding power shouldn’t restrict the way a terminal can configure and use its seating.

The best solutions are often the least noticeable. At Denver International Airport for example, more than 3,000 Zoeftig seats were specified with 100% power saturation, providing every seat position with access to charging. In another airport, passenger profiles, dwell times or the way individual areas are used might point towards a completely different level of provision.

And that’s really the key point. There isn’t a universal formula for how much power an airport needs. A short-dwell gate area, an international departures space and a business-heavy passenger environment can place very different demands on charging infrastructure. The optimum solution comes from understanding how passengers actually use the space before deciding where, and how much power to provide.

It also creates an interesting challenge for longevity. The physical structure of airport seating can remain in service for decades, while the technology passengers carry can change dramatically in just a few years. Designing the two together therefore requires us to think not only about what passengers need today, but how the technology within a seating system can evolve throughout its life.

Because the airport seat hasn’t stopped being somewhere to wait. It’s simply been given another job to do.

If you’re reviewing power provision within an existing terminal or planning a new seating environment, our team can help you best understand your passenger requirements and determine the optimum level, location and type of power provision for your airport.

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