Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Flying Colours regards its 13th and most recent CRJ conversion as its most ambitious–“an aircraft completely personalized to [the client’s] requirements.” The company worked with Harry Schnaper (the private owner’s designer), lead in-house designer Kate Ahrens and its engineering team to create “externally and internally, its most complex, bespoke ExecLiner yet.”
The specification incorporated a number of firsts that involved extensive engineering and design innovation: a clean-sheet design shower in the aft lavatory (the first in a CRJ conversion), a customized pivoting bed enabling passengers to store the bed against the aft-cabin wall and an Elbit Systems head-up display and infrared enhanced-vision system. Flying Colours also designed an integrated smoke-extraction system.
“The client wanted to sleep, shower and have the option to live on his airplane when traveling on business,” said marketing executive v-p Eric Gillespie, who oversaw the project. “He is effectively benefitting from a cabin with features similar to [those of] a narrowbody aircraft, but without the associated cost.”
The forward cabin features six electric seats, made in cooperation with AST Seating, with options for recline, vertical adjustment and leg rests and a memory pre-set option along with electric heating, massage features and controllable lumbar support.
An in-flight entertainment (IFE) system was custom-designed with Esoteric SkyPad iPad control of onboard media, IFE and cabin lights, blinds and temperature. Ultrasone designed the IFE headphones. Other IFE features included video teleconferencing, a 20-terabyte server holding more than 7,500 films and 52,000 songs, five telephone lines and projection of presentations to all monitors. A new FAA STC was developed for final certification of the aircraft.–I.G.

News and developments about airplanes, helicopters and unmanned air vehicles used in all varieties of operations, including airlines, military, business, commercial, general aviation and private.