RJ renovates cabin of first Airbus A340

Tuesday, 16 November 2010 23:48 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Royal Jordanian (RJ), the national airline of Jordan, has completed a comprehensive cabin modernisation to the first of its four Airbus A340s serving North American destinations.

Royal Jordanian is the first airline in the world to equip its aircraft with Seat Integrated Technology (SiT), the new, state-of-the-art audio video on demand (Avod) in-flight entertainment system developed by Zodiac Aerospace.

RJ president/CEO Hussein Dabbas said the renovation included aircraft cabin modifications to provide premium services to the passengers on long-haul flights, the most important being the new in-flight entertainment system that provides a personal touch screen to all passengers on board the aircraft.

He added that the 229-economy class seats were replaced with new seats and equipped with the SiT, whereas the 24-Crown class seats were modified to suit the SiT product, as well as modifications carried out to the aircraft cabin.

Dabbas pointed out that the airline will start with the cabin re-configuration for its second A340 aircraft on 2 November. It is expected to conclude renovating all four Airbus A340 fleet by mid December this year.

“Royal Jordanian is glad to cooperate with Zodiac Aerospace, one of the most renowned, leading companies in the air transport industry,” said Dabbas.

He mentioned that the revamping of the aircraft on these routes comes after the airline concluded the modernisation of its medium- and short-haul fleet of aircraft. It reflects RJ’s keenness to invest in its fleet and to offer its long-haul route passengers distinguished amenities, he added.

Dabbas pointed out,” the four Airbus A340 aircraft that are being renovated will continue their operations to New York, Chicago, Detroit and Montreal until the 11 Boeing 787 Dreamliners start being part of the fleet, by the end of 2013. RJ had decided to introduce 7 Dreamliners on capital lease and the other 4 on operational lease basis.”

On this occasion, Royal Jordanian organized a two-hour inaugural flight on 1 November, in the Jordanian skies. On board the inaugural flight were Minister of Transport Alaa’ Batayneh, Deputy Chairman of RJ’s board of directors Sharif Faris Sharaf, RJ president/CEO Hussein Dabbas, travel agents and representatives of the local press and media. The flight aimed at introducing the details of the comprehensive cabin modernisation to those on board.

Director SiT Operations Eric Cornilleau expressed satisfaction with the fact that RJ is the first airline on the globe to choose the SiT.

He said that “SiT offers a wholly new “simplified architecture” yielding reduction of the overall IFE system weight, measured with gains of approximately 35 per cent, lowering ownership cost and limiting integration costs, and dramatically improving system reliability, assuring system availability for passengers at nearly 100 per cent.”

According to Cornilleau, SiT also eases installation while using available and fully mature and tested information technologies. This innovative system design will optimise maintenance operations by allowing simple and rapid tasks that lower operation costs.