Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Author: James Wallace

Boeing Goes An Extra Step To Design Planes For The Aging

A group of young Boeing engineers aged four or five decades on a short roundtrip flight this week between Seattle and Spokane.

No, they didn't journey into the Twilight Zone, though it may have appeared that's where they were headed given the odd-looking suits and yellow glasses these time travelers wore. But they were on regularly scheduled Horizon and Alaska Airlines passenger flights as part of a project by The Boeing Co. to teach them firsthand the problems older people may experience when they fly. Boeing engineer Bryan Moran Zoom Mike Urban / P-I Boeing engineer Bryan Moran has trouble bending a knee to put on a shoe in his "third age suit," designed to simulate the flexibility problems of the elderly. He and other engineers took a flight in the suits Tuesday. View a gallery of the engineers and their struggles with the suits.

The engineers, in their 20s or early 30s, are helping Boeing design the aircraft interiors of tomorrow -- for the 787 Dreamliner and beyond.

"If you can't get the toilet paper out, it can ruin your flight," he said later.

And the passengers who will fly in those planes are getting older, just like the world's population.

Experience is the best teacher, so the engineers had to age to better appreciate how hard it is on a tight-fitting commercial jetliner for older passengers to get in and out of their seats, use one of those tiny lavatories, store their bags in the overhead bins, or pick up a purse or laptop computer from beneath the seat in front of them.

The "third-age suits" the engineers wore on the flights were developed by Ford to help the auto company's engineers design cars that are more user friendly for the elderly. The suits and yellow glasses mimic what it's like to be older, when vision and dexterity are not what they used to be and just moving about can be a struggle.

"It was so educational," said Ryan Thompson, 25, an engineer in the galley and lavatory group on Boeing's 777 and 767 programs. "I didn't realize just how hard it is for (older people) to get around. Until you experience it, you just can't understand."

The yellow glasses made it "impossible" for Tiffany Paulson, 32, an engineer on the 737 program in Renton, to see her black purse on the dark cabin floor.

It was so difficult for 28-year-old engineer Bethany Franko to get out of her window seat and make her way down the aisle to the lavatory that she said she would have remained in her seat had she been an older passenger and needed to use the restroom.

That actually happens on airplane flights. As part of Boeing's "Experience Aging Project," flight attendants from Cathay Pacific who were interviewed said it is not all that unusual to find a wet seat after a flight where an elderly person was seated.

The tasks each engineer had to perform while in the suits included storing a carry-on bag, adjusting the air vent above their seat, going to the lavatory, sitting on the toilet and accessing the toilet paper and paper towels.

Their suits included gloves that limited what their fingers could do. Bryan Moran, 27, found it impossible to unroll the new roll of toilet paper in one of the lavatories he used. Others had the same problem.

"If you can't get the toilet paper out, it can ruin your flight," he said later.

Moran is lead engineer for lavatories on Boeing's new 787, which will enter passenger service in 2008. Franko is also part of that 787 group. The "Dreamlavs" on the Dreamliner will be bigger, more comfortable, more automated and easier to use for all passengers, young and old. And the Dreamlavs will also have a window.

The aging project is run by Vickie Curtis, a fiftysomething engineer in the company's Payloads Concept Center.

"There is a general change in world demographics," she said. "We are living longer and we are not having as many children. The result is a shift in the medium age upward. All the baby boomers are encroaching upon retirement."

Her research, using various databases from such organizations as the United Nations, U.S. Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicates that by 2050, for the first time in human history, the percentage of the world's population that is over 60 will exceed the percentage of younger people. In the United States, between 2015 and 2050, there will be 7 million more children but 26 million more senior citizens. The median age in the United States is now 36. It will be 42 by 2050. In Japan, the median age will be 53 by 2050.

"This tells me that Boeing needs to prepare for older passengers," Curtis said.

With the help of Alaska Airlines, Curtis and her colleagues at the Payloads Concept Center interviewed senior passengers who got on and off jets at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They talked with seniors at retirement communities. They interviewed geriatric specialists and attended workshops on what it's like to lose vision, hearing and dexterity as people get older.

Curtis also visited Ford's ergonomics supervisor in Britain. Ford had hired a local university there to develop the so-called third-age suit, a set of coveralls that restrict the major joints -- back, knees, elbows, neck, hands and ankles. Yellow glasses simulate the lens of the eyes of older people. This makes it much harder to differentiate color contrast.

Ford engineers used the suits and glasses in designing the company's Ford Focus.

"The car definitely does not look geriatric," Curtis said.

Likewise, Boeing does not want its engineers to design airplane interiors that look like flying nursing homes, she said.

"You can make subtle changes that don't increase weight and don't look geriatric," Curtis said. "The aim is to get good design."

Simply moving the seat locator number lower -- it is typically above a seat on the overhead bin -- would help older people who wear bifocal glasses, she said.

Earlier this year, Curtis gave a presentation on the aging project at the aircraft interiors expo in Hamburg, Germany. It is important for Boeing's suppliers to be aware of the changing demographics, she said.

Tuesday's flight to Spokane and back was the second of four flight workshops that Curtis has planned for engineers to wear the suits and experience what its like for older passengers.

Joining the Boeing group for the Spokane trip was Koichi Kitade, manager of engineering liaison for Jamco in Tokyo. Jamco supplies the lavatories for Boeing's widebody jets and recently was awarded the contract to supply the lavs for the 787.

He wore one of the suits on the return flight to Seattle.

Three of the young Boeing engineers wore suits on the flight to Spokane on a 74-seat Horizon Air Q400 turboprop. The flight was full. So was the return flight to Seattle, on an Alaska Airlines MD-80. One of those in a suit on the return trip was Pete Guard, manager of Boeing's Payloads Concept Center. The center's mission, he said, is to "explore and change the future of flight for people."

The center's engineers are looking at least five or more years into the future, said Guard, who has led the 787 interior design effort.

"It's about making airplanes for people," he said.

On both flights Tuesday, passengers were informed by flight attendants once the planes were in the air that the strange-looking people in the suits were part of a Boeing project on aging.

Passengers said they welcomed this kind of research.

"I'm absolutely impressed," said 50-year-old Tony Wiley of Riverside, Calif., who was on a business trip to Spokane. He teaches scuba diving. He noted that wet suits worn by divers also restrict movement, just like the suits worn by the Boeing engineers.

As he sat in his window seat on the Horizon flight, Wiley indicated the Boeing project might not have an immediate impact on passengers who are elderly now. "But I'm glad they are thinking about people like me," he said.