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FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE BUILDING IS hardly worth a second glance. Perhaps it is a small warehouse or some up-and-coming wholesaler, although no signs or markings provide a hint. It sits in a modest lot of similar-looking buildings along a main road in downtown Auckland, but it could just as easily be in any major city around the globe.
Looks are deceiving, however, because inside this building Air New Zealand is rewriting the book on passenger accommodations. And what happens here likely will influence cabin design around the world no less than did the first lie-flat seat-bed more than a decade ago: Economy seats that convert into couches, premium economy seats that are more at home in a wine bar, a further refinement of the airline's award-winning fully flat seat-beds, galleys at every door, wine-tasting sessions for economy passengers.
"We've reinvented everything we do and given choice and control back to the passenger," beams Group GM-International Airlines Ed Sims. ATW's Airline of the Year for 2010 has gone to extraordinary lengths to reinvent not only itself but the air travel experience, leaving rivals to try to catch up. Its effort, revealed exclusively to ATW , will be introduced on its first 777-300ER to be delivered in November.
The journey began more than three years ago when ANZ took delivery of its final 777-200ER, with executives acknowledging that although they had somewhat challenged themselves with a few new concepts, they had not really reinvented anything. Sims explains that the executive team realized more could be done and was not happy just to be leaders by being first to take off-the-shelf products. "We wanted to challenge everything," he asserts. So the airline created a project team code-named Kupe (according to Maori legend, Kupe was the first Polynesian to reach New Zealand). But, he says, while it had the best people for execution, "we were perhaps not the best at challenging accepted industry wisdom."
Enter IDEO, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based design team that has excelled at confronting conventional thinking as it became one of the top 10 innovative global think tanks. "One of their designers came down in 2006 to talk to us about design thinking and she was very impressive," Sims explains. "We wanted a creative agency...