All the way from inception to market PRACTICAL AND CONSIDERATE
Altitude Aerospace Interiors
Soaring to new heights; how a company pivoted from designing customized aircraft products to a production-orientated organisation.
THE TRANSITION
Altitude Aerospace Interiors was formed when Air New Zealand separated its design engineering department from Technical Operations to create a standalone design engineering business. The new company initially focused on interior products and interiors reconfiguration, as well as VIP completions and refurbishment services for the commercial airline industry.
After having worked with the company on different projects over several years, Altitude expressed the ambition to move from a custom outfit organisation to a production orientated operation. They came to Locus for product development expertise, for assistance making the transition with the objective to become offerable to Boeing – the world’s largest aerospace company.
EXPERTISE
Research
Innovation Consulting
Commercialisation
Business Development
NEW STRUCTURES
We helped the team restructure their R&D programme to be geared for product development, driven by design research and customer understanding and compatible with their electronic document management system (EDMS). Once in place, we helped them create a galley production program that would give Boeing confidence to grant them an offer. This was a true challenge; in order to speed up the aircraft assembly process from 40 days down to 7 days, Boeing was narrowing down its pool of suppliers. Under strong guidance and support from Locus, Altitude successfully completed its mission, with the first order of 46 galleys for Boeing aircraft for FedEx.
A major change in the team’s approach was to decouple the design process from the actual execution and implementation process, which is under strict aviation compliances. This allowed Altitude to freely develop and iterate their ideas without immediate constraints.
PARTNERSHIPS
We continued to work with Altitude Interiors until they got acquired by AIM Aviation, one of the leading global suppliers of cabin interiors, to form AIM Altitude. Together they now predominantly focus on delivering interiors to the world’s leading airlines and OEMs including Boeing, Airbus, and the UK Ministry of Defence.
“Under strong guidance and support from Locus, Altitude successfully completed its mission with the first order of 46 galleys for Boeing aircraft for FedEx.”
TEAM
Timothy Allan
Blythe Reese-Jones
Rogier Simons
Jono Jones
Baden Smith
Ingrid von den Bosch
MEDIA & HIGHLIGHTS
Altitude Interiors awarded Boeing Galley RFP for 737 aircraft
DOCUMENTS
Boeing 737 SFE Galley RFP — Confidential