Cabin lighting plays a major role in enhancing the passenger satisfaction and mood during a flight journey. The technology behind lighting has witnessed several changes over the past few years. Weight reduction, lesser power consumption and versatility are the major factors influencing the R&D of cabin lighting. In 2018, the aircraft cabin lighting is a $1.5 billion market that is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5-6% till 2021. Some leading players have also mentioned that great lighting can boost the revenue in the Aviation industry by upto 125% YoY.

One of the major trends in today’s market is the use of LED for cabin lighting due to their low power consumption and versatility specially designed for Aviation industry. In April 2019, one of the major players in the cabin lighting space for aviation industry, Collins Aerospace launched μLED Reading Light for cabin lighting. μLED or Micro LED is an emerging technology and is different from OLED because Micro LED uses GaN LED technology and offers greater brightness compared to OLED and also has higher efficiency in terms of lux/W.

Tapestry Full LED Mood Lighting is a cabin lighting solution developed by Collins Aerospace, which provide lightings with different colors based on time, mood or other settings. Tapestry’s color rendering index (CRI) color points are calibrated for providing consistent and superior color accuracy. It also provides an integrated control panel which lets crew members to control the brightness and set the color.

Companies like Cobalt Aerospace has developed lighting system called Cobalt Spectrum, which provide mood-lighting effect. Mood-lighting effect is a dynamic lighting effect which provide lighting effects for more than 20 scenes while traditional lights can only emit basic effects like bright/dim and on/off.

Conclusion

Aviation industry is facing competition in many regions with major players looking to consolidate their market and new players offering more and innovative value-added services to attract more flyers. New and innovative ways to attract passengers is a norm in aviation Industry. In this regard, new initiatives in cabin lighting such as mood lighting can enhance the passenger experience and help give passengers a pleasant experience.

- Arjun Das
ICT - Research Analyst
Infoholic Research