MAYA, the compelling business class concept seat from Collins Aerospace — featuring a 45” curved ultra-wide OLED screen from Panasonic Avionics — burst onto the scene at the 2024 Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg, becoming one of the showstoppers of the event. Now Panasonic reveals it is in “very advanced discussions” with several airlines to bring a version of the screen, dubbed Astrova Curve, on board aircraft.
“Our element of MAYA is actually called Astrova Curve and we have three curved displays that we’re working with right now,” Panasonic Avionics vice president of product & portfolio management Andrew Masson tells Runway Girl Network.
And, as the name suggests, Astrova Curve ports over many of the modular innovations found in Panasonic’s next generation OLED-based Astrova IFE system. “What we had at AIX, which was a 45” curved display, the whole backend infrastructure, the seat box, the intelligence, all of that is exactly the same,” says Masson.
What sets Astrova Curve apart from Astrova and indeed all IFE systems today, he says, is the curved screen. It’s 21 by 9 ultra-wide aspect ratio rather than 16 by 9.
The latter “is kind of the same as like your TV at home,” notes Masson, “whereas 21 by 9 represents much closer to CinemaScope widescreen film format. So when you go to the cinema and you sit in front of the big screen, that’s actually 21 by 9, and then when you buy the DVD or download the movie, you’ll get a cut down version of that that’s been edited for TV.”
What Astrova Curve enables you to do as a customer is you can buy the cinema footage.
So for example, if an airline passenger is watching a movie with stunning cinematography and lots happening onscreen, such as Warner Bros.-distributed Dune on Astrova Curve, they’ll feel totally immersed in the content.
Airlines will customize and personalize the Astrova Curve experience for premium passengers; the screen is seen here as part of the MAYA concept seat shown by Collins Aerospace and Panasonic Avionics at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg. Image: John Walton
For Astrova Curve, Panasonic Avionics is also taking advantage of the extra screen space to offer what it calls “widget space” for passengers.
“So we had like the map come up one side, or have applications come up another, so you could keep the movie on the whole time and then bring the map up, kind of floating above it and then you could plot out your journey without coming out of a movie and it was super immersive and engaging and I tell you we could not get people out of that seat,” he says of the buzz around the MAYA business seat concept at AIX, which your author and fellow RGN journalists observed.
Another feature adding to Astrova Curve’s immersive proposition is the fact that Panasonic got rid of headphones insofar as passengers won’t need to use headphones if they don’t want to use them.
“It’s 50% more immersive than being in an IMAX cinema; it takes like your whole field of vision up, it’s great. You don’t need the headset anymore,” says the Panasonic executive about the Spatial Audio technology also in play for Astrova Curve.
Will Astrova Curve in some ways leapfrog the experience that some aviation stakeholders hope to accomplish inflight with Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headsets? Masson confides that Panasonic acquired a bunch of the headsets to see what they’re like, and reckons that, from an inflight perspective, “People kind of feel like a plum wearing them, to be honest with you.”
While airlines who have explored Astrova Curve including as part of the MAYA suite appreciate the immersive and engaging nature of the product, they’ve also expressed an interest in doing something different for premium passengers, confides Masson.
“Business class seats have gotten very similar to one another; they are herringbone seats with a door or staggered seats with a door. I mean sometimes you struggle to know what one you’re in, and what MAYA enabled for airlines and the industrial designers — because we work with PriestmanGoode and the seating companies — is recognize that they can have a very different future, with a very different much more engaging, immersive system,” he says.
“If you’re a business class passenger, and you sit in this pod with this huge screen, you feel where your money is going. You feel your business class ticket is there and you have all this stuff you can do, like bring up a map and watch a movie and you feel like you’re in Minority Report, it’s incredible.”
Masson confirms to RGN that Panasonic Aviations is indeed proceeding with bringing Astrova Curve to market. “I can’t talk about where we are with customers at this point other than to say we are in very advanced discussions with multiple customers right now and they see the value we bring to it.”
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Featured image credited to Collins Aerospace
