The world’s most prestigious honour for aircraft interior innovation, the Crystal Cabin Award, is set to celebrate ground-breaking achievements in passenger experience at its annual ceremony on 8 April 2025, during the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.
These coveted trophies recognize game-changing advancements shaping the future of air travel comfort, efficiency, and sustainability. Scores of entries spanning major airlines, suppliers, manufacturers and design firms from across the globe were narrowed down to 22 finalists across seven categories by a jury of industry experts.
Among the new categories are “Accessibility” and “Judges’ Choice: Airline Innovation”. All finalists have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to enhancing the passenger journey through ingenious cabin solutions and cutting-edge technology.
Cabin Technologies
This new category unites innovations around systems, components and materials, providing exciting insights into the future of the aircraft cabin. Collins Aerospace has entered “Galley.ai”, an intelligent and connected technological ecosystem that optimizes crew efficiency by streamlining galley management and enabling frictionless communication between crew and passengers via artificial intelligence.
Image: Collins Aerospace
Diehl Aviation aims to revolutionise cabin interiors with “eDecor”, a customizable, energy-efficient décor that enhances both brand presence and passenger comfort, changing the cabin’s appearance on the fly.
Image: Diehl
Invisible when not in use, Lufthansa Technik’s “Hidden Touch Display” is a customizable touch panel that integrates into any cabin’s design, delivering an effortless user experience while maintaining a sleek, uncluttered look.
Image: LHT
Judges’ Choice: Airline Innovation
For the 2025 season, the Crystal Cabin Award features a new category that recognises the decisive role that airlines play in advancing the passenger experience ecosystem.
Selecting from entries by four of the world’s leading airlines, the judging panel will be asked to honour one innovation with a special “Judges’ Choice” award.
The four airline innovations up for consideration were submitted by Air France, Air India, Cathay Pacific and United Airlines. The entry from Air France encompasses new cabins for the Embraer 190 single-aisle aircraft that are due to enter live service in early 2025. The cabin features new leather seats by French manufacturer Expliseat that are 30% lighter than the current model.
Image: Air France
Air India’s entry is Vista, an IFE system designed to prioritise the personal needs of the customer and offer a connected and immersive experience above the clouds.
Image: Air India
“Gallery In The Skies” by Cathay Pacific puts unique works of art into bespoke gallery spaces aboard its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, using design features to create an inspiring art viewing experience in the air.
Image: Cathay
United Airlines’ new digital platform – “United’s Onboard Digital Experience” – is centred on delivering a personalized experience and relevant information to enable customers to feel informed, at ease and in control of their travel experience on over 1,000 aircraft.
Image: United
Passenger Comfort
The innovations in this category serve one purpose: A relaxed, enjoyable and care-free experience for air passengers. The Airbus “A220 Airspace Cabin” extends the airframer’s Airspace cabin concept to the smallest member of its commercial airliner fleet, adding XL overhead bins, Airspace lighting designs and improved power supply for passengers’ devices.
Image: Airbus
Cathay Pacific, JPA Design and Reactor have turned their attention to integrating business suite functionality into the IFEC system of its Aria Suite with “IFEC: In-Flight Entertainment & Control”, giving passengers control over many functions directly within the entertainment system’s interface.
Image: Cathay
Long-haul ergonomics are at the centre of Comfort Motion Global’s “Healthy Motion Seating” entry; this software proactively makes subtle adjustments to positions of seats fitted with electric motors to reduce fatigue and discomfort on long-distance journeys.
Image: Comfort Motion Global
IFEC and Digital Services
Seamless connectivity and personalised content delivery have become key drivers of passengers’ perception of service quality on their journey. Focussed on the needs of VIP passengers travelling on Boeing 737s, Lufthansa Technik, Satcom Direct and IDAIR have collaborated on “Triple Innovation For A Five Star Cabin Experience”, a combination of a low-drag, tailfin-mounted radome, an electronically steered LEO antenna solution and an integrated content delivery system designed to maximize operational effectiveness, project value and in-cabin experience for the VIPs.
Image: LHT
Safran Cabin has entered “Safran Connected Interiors” to the award in 2025. Using internet-of-things technology, the system autonomously captures and transfers operational data across cabin equipment to provide a fully digitalized, retrofit-ready maintenance solution.
Image: Safran
Thales Avionics’ entry, “360Stream”, is firmly dedicated to providing the same standard of seamless content delivery as we experience on the ground. 360Stream provides access to “happening now” live content and for the first time offers Digital Video Recording (DVR) capability, as well as near-live updates and highlights of live events.
Image: Thales
Sustainable Cabin
Sustainability is a key area of innovation for the Crystal Cabin Award, recognizing an industry-wide movement towards saving emissions, reducing waste and introducing circularity into processes and products. Boeing, Adient Aerospace, Botany Weaving and LanzaTech have teamed up to enter “From Waste Carbon to Cabin Comfort: Bringing Circularity to Aircraft Textiles”. Using carbon capture technology, the system transforms carbon emissions into sustainable fabric for the aircraft interiors industry, providing multiple ways of reducing the environmental footprint of textile production.
Image: LanzaTech
Diehl Aviation has chosen to concentrate on materials circularity for its 2025 entry, “ECO bin”. Billed as the world’s first fully recyclable overhead stowage compartment, it features a specially developed recyclable sandwich material and reduces environmental impact by saving weight and CO2 emissions.
Image: Diehl
Completing the three finalists for the Sustainable Cabin category in 2025 is Unum Aircraft Seating, whose entry “Ecoprint Refoam” utilises additive manufacturing techniques to create a lightweight, re-cyclable replacement for traditional polyurethane foam stacks in aircraft seating.
Image: Unum
Accessibility
Innovation to ensure the same quality of air travel for everyone has become an area of growing focus with in the aviation industry. To reflect this important trend, Accessibility is now a separate award category at the Crystal Cabin Awards in its own right. Cathay Pacific has reached the final with an innovation to make its Aria Suite business seat more accessible for wheelchair users. Titled “Seamless Accessibility”, the concept integrates a movable door garage specifically created to make transitioning from a wheelchair to a passenger seat easier.
Image: Cathay
Collins Aerospace’s entry “Prime+” is a cabin platform system for wheelchair users that enables them to fly while seated in their wheelchairs, completely removing the need to move from a wheelchair to an installed seat.
Image: Collins Aerospace
“Space³” by Diehl Aviation adopts a flexible approach to accommodate wheelchair users in aircraft lavatory areas, incorporating several features such as foldable doors and sinks, while saving up to 80kg of weight.
Image: Diehl
University
A hotbed of innovation, the university category opens up the Crystal Cabin Award to blue-sky concepts from university students. Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) cooperated with Diehl Aviation on “Single Aisle Lavatory Door 1 – Accessibility for all”. The concept is designed to enhance accessibility for passengers with reduced mobility on single aisle aircraft in the lavatory space in a way that allows users to travel more comfortably and independently. The lavatory features a spacious layout that accommodates an onboard wheelchair and provides sufficient room for a support person, ensuring dignity and ease of use.
Image: HAW
“Ultra-lightweight Display System” by students from Tongji University in cooperation with Boeing leverages miniature projectors and gesture recognition technology to deliver a new in-flight entertainment system (IFES) experience for both airlines and passengers.
Image: Tongji
Each projector can use surfaces like seatbacks, tray tables, windows and cabin partitions to display flight information or video content. The students of UDIT Universidad de Diseño, Innovación y Tecnología in cooperation with Iberia in Madrid entered “R.A.I.S.S.”, or Restroom Autonomous In-flight Sanitising System. This robotic system collects and cleans the floor after each use, and incorporates additional highlights such as an interactive screen, an island-format sink, and a self-cleaning toilet system.
Image: UDIT
The Innovations of The Year: Gala Award Ceremony on 8 April 2025 in Hamburg
The Crystal Cabin Award, an initiative of the Hamburg Aviation cluster, is awarded this year in seven categories: Cabin Technologies, Passenger Comfort, IFEC & Digital Services, Sustainable Cabin, University and Judges Choice Airline Innovation.
The finalists will have the opportunity to present their concepts in person to the jury at the world’s leading trade fair for aircraft cabins, the Aircraft Interiors Expo (8 – 10 April 2025 in Hamburg). The winners of the 2025 Crystal Cabin Awards will be announced on the evening of 8 April at a gala dinner at the 5-star Grand Elysee Hamburg hotel.
Renowned Industry Award – Renowned Industry Support
The Crystal Cabin Award is supported by:
Platinum Sponsor: Panasonic Avionics Corporation (Category Sponsor: Sustainable Cabin)
Gold Sponsors: Collins Aerospace, Diehl Aviation, Lufthansa Technik, Safran Cabin, Thales Avionics
Silver Sponsors: Airbus
Category Sponsor “University”: Accenture
Online Sponsors: Jetliner Cabins
Crystal Cabin Award Show Partner: Aircraft Interiors Expo, Reed Exhibitions
Trophy Sponsor: Krüger Aviation
Media Partners: Aircraft Interiors International, APEX, Flight Chic, Flightglobal, Future Travel Experience, Inflight Magazine, PAX International, PAX Tech, PaxEx, Runway Girl Network
Join the sponsors and supporters of the Crystal Cabin Award! Information about sponsoring opportunities and packages is available from Angela Wockert
About the Crystal Cabin Award
The Crystal Cabin Award is THE international prize for innovations in the field of aircraft cabin. Under the motto “Let your ideas take off,” a high-profile jury of renowned scientists, engineers, representatives of aircraft manufacturers and airlines, and specialist journalists awards exceptional cabin concepts and products. The competition was initiated by the Hamburg Aviation aviation cluster and is organised by the Crystal Cabin Award e.V. Since 2007, this unique award has been presented annually at the Aircraft Interiors Expo held in Hamburg. The trophies have now become a globally known and coveted seal of quality.
Featured image credited to Collins Aerospace
