Aspire Pre-Flight Hospitality has collaborated with BA Product and Industrial Design students from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London to explore the future of pre-flight comfort and design a new signature lounge chair concept.
The winning design embodies the Aspire ethos, elevating the guest experience to make every Wait Wonderful®.
Aspire Pre‑Flight Hospitality (Aspire), Swissport International’s airport hospitality brand, has unveiled a new lounge chair concept following a competitive design brief with BA Product and Industrial Design students from the world-renowned art and design school Central Saint Martins.
Aspire’s research has shown that the three top priorities for guests when choosing a lounge are calm, comfort and quality. The brief invited around 20 student designers to develop a solution which addressed all three of these desires, challenged conventional airport seating customs and pushed the creative envelope.
The concepts were presented to Aspire in a two-part judging process onsite at Central Saint Martins, showcasing the incredible vision and creativity of tomorrow’s design leaders.
Redefining what comfort means
After going through the melee of check-in, security and the terminal floor, what travellers crave most is a sense of personal space. The ability to always see their luggage. A surface to work, eat or simply rest a screen on. Light they can adjust to suit their mood, the hour, or the task at hand. And finally, somewhere that looks and feels like a place worth settling into – essentially somewhere guests can make their Wait Wonderful®.
With this in mind, Aspire is challenging the traditional view of pre-flight hospitality and redefining what comfort means in an airport lounge setting. By considering both the physical and psychological factors that impact travellers’ ability to truly unwind before a flight, Aspire is transforming how they experience their pre-flight downtime.
The winning design
The winning design, by Aya Maria El Omeira, addresses all these elements, comprising a modular, curved multi-seat lounge system that combines luxury, ergonomics, and durability. The chair brings together privacy, intelligent luggage storage, an integrated table, charging capabilities and adjustable lighting – all of which are practical details, but beautifully executed.
Built on a reinforced steel frame, the design leverages the high-quality materials including solid walnut wood and sumptuous cushioning. The outside of the chair is upholstered in Italian ‘intrecciato’ leather, a technique originating in Tuscany and Venice, where thin strips of soft leather are meticulously interlaced by hand to create a pattern that is at once flexible, durable and extremely luxurious.
“At Aspire, we’re on a mission to redefine what comfort means. It’s so much more than a place to sit while waiting for your flight; it’s the feeling of being genuinely looked after. Aya’s design embodies this ethos perfectly,” said David Collyer, Global Senior Vice President of Aspire Pre‑Flight Hospitality. “This project is part of our ongoing commitment to delivering the highest quality guest experience in our lounges and we’re thrilled to be working with Central Saint Martins, their incredibly talented students, and Aya in particular, to bring this vision to life.”
“I designed for both physical and psychological comfort, anticipating guests’ needs to significantly elevate their lounge experience. Another key feature of the design is its modularity, which means it can be deployed in different configurations depending on the lounge and space available. This has been such an interesting and thought-provoking project, and I’m thrilled that my chair has been chosen as the winning design,” said Aya Maria El Omeira.
