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Recaro Holding chief business development officer René Dankwerth presenting the new seat for the Eve eVTOL aircraft.
Recaro Holding chief business development officer René Dankwerth was on hand at the Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg to unveil its new seat for the Eve eVTOL aircraft.
The seat features a four-point safety harness, like that in helicopters. Its seat pan is 18 in. wide, the same as many airliner economy class seats, and weighs just under 9 kg. Among the features that can be accommodated in the design is a lumbar spine adjustment function.
The seat will be certificated under ETSO regulations rather than the more complex route of type certification. It will be qualified under both Part 23 (small aircraft) and Part 27 (helicopters) regulations. Its first flight use is scheduled for spring 2026.
Recaro is also showing the R7 Horizon project, which takes the current R7 business-class seat—currently in use by Iberia, with LATAM and LOT Polish Airlines scheduled to acquire it shortly—and adds new features to bring it up to “business class plus” standards for airlines following the growing trend of making the first few seats at the front of their business cabin larger.
The partitions surrounding business-class suites are becoming steadily higher, Dankwerth noted, to increase the degree of privacy for occupants. Innovations in the early stages of development for the R7 Horizon project include headphone-free audio systems with speakers built into the headrest, and ambient lighting controls.
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