For Cobalt Aerospace, the challenge of 2018 is keeping up with what is turning into an “amazing year of growth” for the five-year-old company, with six flag carriers opting for its LED full colour mood lighting system as a drop-in replacement for traditional white fluorescent cabin illumination systems.
One of those new customers is Aer Lingus, which has asked Cobalt to outfit 50 widebody and narrowbody aircraft.
According to technical support vice president Edward Young, interest from lessors is also “huge”, because the LED system, once installed, is easily reprogrammable to provide colour schemes to support any customer’s branding.
Cobalt is already flying on Airbus A320, A330 and A340 and Boeing 737 aircraft, with A380s and 767s coming “soon”.
As a straight replacement for fluorescents, Cobalt’s LED tubes can be fitted to an A320 in about 4hrs. The really clever bit, though, is the patent-pending control system, which lets cabin crew select a large number of customised lighting schemes from a standard Airbus touch-screen control panel, which remains as original equipment.
Cobalt manufactures its systems in-house in Norfolk, in England. Working with a small supply chain, the company can keep tight control of lead times.
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Source: Flight Daily News
