Easy Things to Fix #2: A ‘Bright’ Idea for Airbus

I recently returned to Boston from Denver on a relatively uneventful flight. However, I was witness to one situation that really left me thinking.

Have you ever been on a red-eye? If so, you probably remember it being exceptionally dark while everyone was sleeping. Exceptionally dark that is, unless you happen to be sitting next to an insomniac reader. If that was the case you might have a vague memory of ’seeing the light’ through your eyelids.

Unfortunately, that light was not the great beyond.  It was an LED coming from directly overhead. Wow those little suckers are bright! The guy sitting next to me in Denver thought so too. Now his reaction was a bit disconcerting and fairly comical at the same time: he called the stewardess over to ask if she could dim the lamp for him, and when she replied that this was impossble he tried ripping the light out of the panel.

Once that was settled I was left thinking about the design of overhead lights in aircraft. Why couldn’t the manufacturers install dimmer switches? Surely their engineers travel, so it amazes me to think that the people responsible for establishing passenger safety and comfort have missed this obvious detail.

I wondered about this for a while, then decided to offer Airbus some feedback (the plane I was on was a model a319 EOW). Hoping that they are forward thinking enough to set up a user-contribution portal like Dell’s IdeaStorm, I was not surprised to find that their simple, direct response mechanisms are quite limited.  And honestly I’m not invested in this enough to call France, find an engineer and talk it through.

On the other hand, to be fair to them, they are hosting a global challenge called Fly Your Ideas, in which “innovative thinkers [are called on] to develop ideas that can shape the future of aviation and deliver a further reduction in the industry’s impact on the environment.”

Good job on the big picture, Airbus.  But don’t forgt that the small steps are important too.