Patrick Lindon (born 1965) is a Swiss industrial designer best known for his Business Class seating and cabin interiors for Swiss International Air Lines. He began designing and building furniture in 1980 and opened his design office in 1983. He has been producing his own line of modular furniture since 1998. The ‘T71 System’ is sold worldwide and is part of the collection at the Museum of Design Zurich.
Swiss International Air Lines has been flying Business Class Seating and Cabin Interiors designed by Patrick Lindon Industrial Design since 2001. The most recent seating and interior design was unveiled in May 2008. [1] [2] The new Business Class seats are fully reclinable, with a two meter long bed. The staggered arrangement of seats, known as the Thompson Vantage configuration, is a world premiere and offers a high degree of privacy and mobility within the aircraft cabin. The seating has been installed on all of Swiss' long-haul fleet. [3]
In 2011, Swiss won the Business Traveller Award for ‘Best Airline for Europe’ for the fifth consecutive year, as well as ‘Best Airline for North & South America’ and ‘Best Business Class’. [4]
From invention, design development, right through the final production of the Vantage Business Class seat, Patrick Lindon been in close collaboration with James Thompson from Thompson Aero Seating. A research and development, engineering and patent holding company, Thompson Aero Seating is based in Portadown in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. They are best known for their space-saving airline seating design. In February 2011, Thompson’s opened their first seat manufacturing and assembly plant. The improved Thompson Vantage seats will be completed by the end of 2011. [5]
Patrick Lindon Industrial Design is based in Walchwil, Switzerland, with offices in Zurich, Basel and London.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, legally Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V., is the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands. KLM is headquartered in Amstelveen, with its hub at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It is part of the Air France–KLM group and a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. Founded in 1919, KLM is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name and had 35,488 employees and a fleet of 119 as of 2015. KLM operates scheduled passenger and cargo services to 145 destinations.
Finnair is the flag carrier and largest airline of Finland, with its headquarters in Vantaa on the grounds of Helsinki Airport, its hub. Finnair and its subsidiaries dominate both domestic and international air travel in Finland. Its major shareholder is the government of Finland, which owns 55.8% of the shares. Finnair is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance. In 2017, it transported about 11.9 million passengers to over 100 European, 20 Asian and 7 North American destinations. At the end of 2017, the airline employed 5,918 people.
Swiss International Air Lines AG, commonly referred to as Swiss or Swiss Air Lines, is the flag carrier of Switzerland, operating scheduled services in Europe and to North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Zurich Airport serves as its sole hub and Geneva Airport as a focus city. The airline was formed following the bankruptcy in 2002 of Swissair, Switzerland's then flag carrier. The new airline was built around what had been Swissair's regional subsidiary, Crossair. Swiss retains Crossair's IATA code LX. It assumed Swissair's old ICAO code of SWR, to maintain international traffic rights. It is a member of Star Alliance and a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. Its headquarters are at EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg near Basel, Switzerland, and an office at Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland. The company's registered office is in Basel.
A wide-body aircraft, also known as a twin-aisle aircraft, is an airliner with a fuselage wide enough to accommodate two passenger aisles with seven or more seats abreast. The typical fuselage diameter is 5 to 6 m. In the typical wide-body economy cabin, passengers are seated seven to ten abreast, allowing a total capacity of 200 to 850 passengers. The largest wide-body aircraft are over 6 m (20 ft) wide, and can accommodate up to eleven passengers abreast in high-density configurations.
Japan Airlines Co., Ltd., also known as JAL (Jaru) or Nikkō (日航), is an international airline and Japan's flag carrier, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Haneda Airport, as well as Osaka's Kansai International Airport and Itami Airport. JAL group companies include Japan Airlines, J-Air, Japan Air Commuter, Japan Transocean Air, and Ryukyu Air Commuter for domestic feeder services, and JAL Cargo for cargo and mail services.
KLM Cityhopper is the regional airline subsidiary of KLM, headquartered in Haarlemmermeer, North Holland, Netherlands. It is based at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. As a subsidiary of Air France–KLM, it is an affiliate of SkyTeam. The airline operates scheduled European feeder services on behalf of KLM.
Philippine Airlines (PAL), a trade name of PAL Holdings, Inc., also known historically as Philippine Air Lines, is the flag carrier of the Philippines. Headquartered at the PNB Financial Center in Pasay, the airline was founded in 1941 and is the first and oldest commercial airline in Asia operating under its original name.
Air China Limited is the flag carrier of the People's Republic of China and one of the "Big Three" mainland Chinese airlines. Air China's headquarters are in Shunyi District, Beijing. Air China's flight operations are based primarily at Beijing Capital International Airport. In 2017, the airline carried 102 million domestic and international passengers with an average load factor of 81%.
EVA Airways Corporation, of which "EVA" stands for Evergreen Airways, is a Taiwanese international airline based at Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei, Taiwan, operating passenger and dedicated cargo services to over 40 international destinations in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. EVA Air is largely privately owned and flies a fully international route network. It is a 5-star airline, rated by Skytrax. It is the second largest Taiwanese airline. EVA Air is headquartered in Luzhu, Taoyuan City, Taiwan. The company slogan is “Sharing the World, Flying Together” (分享世界,比翼雙飛).
Business class is a travel class available on many commercial airlines and rail lines, known by brand names which vary, by airline or rail company. In the airline industry, it was originally intended as an intermediate level of service between economy class and first class, but many airlines now offer business class as the highest level of service, having eliminated first-class seating. Business class is distinguished from other travel classes by the quality of seating, food, drinks, ground service and other amenities. In commercial aviation, full business class is usually denoted 'J' or 'C' with schedule flexibility, but can be many other letters depending on circumstances.
Economy class, also called third class, coach class, steerage, or to distinguish it from the slightly more expensive premium economy class, standard economy class or budget economy class, is the lowest travel class of seating in air travel, rail travel, and sometimes ferry or maritime travel. Historically, this travel class has been called tourist class or third class on ocean liners.
GoJet Airlines LLC is a regional airline headquartered in Bridgeton, Missouri, United States. Wholly owned by Trans States Holdings, it has 1,670 employees. It operates commuter feeder services under the United Express brand of United Airlines and recently completed a multi-year service agreement for Delta Airlines under the Delta Connection brand. United Express flights are currently operated out of United's hubs at Chicago–O'Hare, Newark and Washington-Dulles. GoJet's Delta Connection branded flights came to an end on March 31, 2020. Most of the flying at the end of the agreement was out of Detroit and Minneapolis–St. Paul as well as Raleigh-Durham. GoJet Airlines system operations center (SOC), training center, and corporate offices are co-located in the former Trans World Airlines and Ozark Airlines training center in Bridgeton, Missouri. The airline uses the former McDonnell Douglas factory hangar at Saint Louis Lambert International as its primary maintenance facility with maintenance staff available at all of the airlines domiciles. Its call sign "Lindbergh" is named for aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, who flew the Spirit of St. Louis solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, the first person to do so.
Swiss Global Air Lines was a Swiss airline and a subsidiary of Swiss International Air Lines.
An aircraft seat map or seating chart is a diagram of the seat layout inside a passenger airliner. They are often published by airlines for informational purposes and are of use to passengers for selection of their seat at booking or check-in.
An airline seat is a seat on an airliner in which passengers are accommodated for the duration of the journey. Such seats are usually arranged in rows running across the airplane's fuselage. A diagram of such seats in an aircraft is called an aircraft seat map.
An aircraft cabin is the section of an aircraft in which passengers travel. Most modern commercial aircraft are pressurized, as cruising altitudes are high enough such that the surrounding atmosphere is too thin for passengers and crew to breathe.
James Thompson is a Northern Irish patent holder known for his innovative research and development in airline seating. Thompson holds over twenty patents, most of which have been brought into production. He is best known for his staggered seating design which increases comfort and aircraft capacity.
B/E Aerospace, Inc. was a manufacturer of aircraft passenger cabin interior products for the commercial and business jet aircraft markets. B/E Aerospace had leading worldwide market shares in all of its major product lines and served virtually all of the world's airlines, aircraft manufacturers and leasing companies through its direct global sales and customer support organizations. Based in Wellington, Florida, the company was capitalized as a $4.2 billion corporation as of January 2016. In April 2017 it was purchased by Rockwell Collins, which has since become a part of Collins Aerospace, a business of United Technologies Corporation (UTC), November 2018. In April 2020, UTC and Raytheon merged to form Raytheon Technologies (RTX).
Aviointeriors S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of airline seats. Some of Aviointeriors' competitors include BE Aerospace, Recaro, and Zodiac Aerospace.
First class is a travel class on some passenger airliners intended to be more luxurious than business class, premium economy, and economy class. Originally all planes offered only one class of service, with a second class appearing first in 1955, when TWA introduced two different types of service on its Super Constellations.