Several years ago, Airbus introduced what it called "cabin flex." The planemaker worked
out that it could increase the number of passengers that its A321neo could fly
just by tinkering with the location, layout, and number of emergency exit doors.
Let’s look at these changes and their outcome.
The Airbus cabin flex concept allows customers to squeeze up to 240 passengers
onto an A321neo. That number is the aircraft's densest possible configuration
and involves Airbus changing the number of exit doors and modifying the rear fuselage section.
When the first A321 took flight, it had a maximum passenger capacity of 220 passengers.
The cabin flex concept allows operators to squeeze those 20 extra passengers onboard. The first
A321neo in cabin flex mode took flight in 2018. "Compared to the previous A321 variant,
the most visible modifications are a new rear section and a modified passenger
door configuration," Airbus asid before sending that plane to Turkish Airlines.
Core to the cabin flex concept is the number of exit doors and the ability of passengers to easily
access them in an emergency. Traditionally, the A321 has four exit doors along each side of the
aircraft - a forward door; doors just forward and aft of the wing; and finally, a rear door.
The location of those doors is based on the anticipated distribution of passengers on
the plane. An operator's chosen cabin configuration will influence that.
Turkish Airlines decided to fit just 182 seats onto their first cabin flex plane,
going for a 162 seat economy class cabin and a 20 seat business class cabin.
In this case, Airbus and Turkish Airlines removed the door located forward of the wing
and installed overwing emergency exits in the center section.
Why? Because a business class cabin takes up more room per passenger,
meaning fewer passengers up the front of the aircraft and a reduced need for exit doors there.
Instead, the bulk of the passengers are seated over the wing and towards the
plane's rear in the economy class cabin. And so naturally, this is where the extra exits went.
In the all-economy class 240 passenger configuration, the plane (theoretically)
has passengers evenly spread throughout. Under the cabin flex concept, the plane would have
five exit doors on each side. This includes the forward door, the two overwing doors,
the door aft of the wing, and the rear door. Removed is the door forward of the
wing. By facilitating easy and speedy access to exits, operators can install more seats.
The traditional A321 layout accommodating 220 passengers sees the overwing doors kept
permanently closed. If customers decide to operate with lighter maximum loads, as is the case with
Turkish Airlines, what doors are activated and what doors stay deactivated change again.
"The ability to reconfigure doors is developed to provide in-service flexibility to our customers,"
Airbus Senior Vice President of Marketing François Caudron told Runway Girl.
"On its own, we could do it overnight, but in reality, a customer is likely to
change the door's configuration when changing the cabin configuration.”
The cabin flex concept goes beyond the A321neo. If an A380 customer has the entire upper deck
filled with business class seats, there are fewer passengers up there per square meter
and a reduced need for emergency exit doors. Alternatively, if you cram in economy class
passengers on both decks, you'll need more doors. Airbus's cabin flex concept offers customers
a degree of flexibility and customization at a relatively low cost. It allows Airbus to broaden
its product-offering without going to the expense and time of introducing new aircraft models.
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