Passengers do not appreciate flying in older-looking cabins, but airlines do not want to refresh cabins of older aircraft, which they continue to fly as stop-gap measures due to production delays or performance issues with new aircraft.
Lufthansa Airlines, like others, faced this problem but two colleagues came up with an idea to solve it: Touch up the minor and major scratches to renew the cabins affordably and quickly.
Lufthansa Technik’s Malta facility started offering this as a service called SkyShine and is next rolling it out to the Americas through its Puerto Rico facility.
“At the end of the day, even if the airplane is old, the cabin can look new,” says Georgios Ouzounidis, Lufthansa Technik’s vice president sales for the Americas. Instead of buying cabin seats, the SkyShine services gets the cabin “to basically look almost like new,” he says.
“It saves airlines a lot of money” while retaining the branding of the airline, says Ouzounidis.
During scheduled maintenance, specialized mechanics inspect a cabin for flaws. They paint affected areas with a special pistol tool, dry it and then apply a clear lacquer.
Mechanics can repair or repaint armrests, which take a beating through daily use. Similarly, scuffed leather seat covers get cleaned or replaced.
After getting SkyShine rolled out in Puerto Rico, Lufthansa Technik wants to introduce mobile SkyShine teams who can travel to a customer’s site for a day or two.
The Lufthansa employees came up with the idea during the Covid-19 pandemic, and then Lufthansa Technik Malta trained its employees and received regulatory approval to offer this service.
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