This week some of the Albion team are out in Auckland shooting a campaign for Air New Zealand’s new long haul product. The shoot is happening at “Hangar 9″, a place that for 3 years previous, had been a secret to the world and even most of the company itself. Inside this Auckland warehouse is a full scale replica of a 777-300 – the only one in existence outside of Boeing.
The hangar is now a pretty sophisticated media briefing center. More akin to a museum than a development facility. The walls are lined with the development story and there are mock ups of all the new seating plus some versions of the ones that didn’t quite make it along the way.
In every way the site has the ability to function like a plane on the ground. There are onboard ovens, in-flight entertainment units and even aviation power generators. Although Air New Zealand take delivery of the new planes at the end of the year, every detail of the product is still being tweaked inside Hangar 9 – food menus, cutlery design, carpets, curtains. Nothing is being left unscrutinised.
What’s evident is the commitment (and – ouch! – the investment) the company has put into the project. What we love most about working with Air New Zealand is the way they approach everything they do with a sense that anything can be achieved. And for the first time the customer has been put first in the flying experience. The new long haul planes fly LON-LAX from April 2011. In the mean time we’ve posted a couple of interesting vids below about the design process and a walk through of the product in Hangar 9.
