Project Review
Cessna Citation XLS
Fleet Design Built on a Long-Standing Partnership
click here for the gallery
click here for the approvals
For a Citation XLS built in 2008, Luminair GmbH of Hamburg commissioned a full interior refurbishment — part of a cabin design meant to carry across its fleet. Luminair is an operator in its first year, founded by a team with long careers in charter. The people behind it, and behind its maintenance partner Alpha Air in Mönchengladbach, have worked with AeroVisto for years. The design did not start with a specification. It started with a conversation.
The design goes back to a visit in Hamburg: AeroVisto brought material samples and sat down with the operator’s leadership, its Chief Experience Officer and its CAMO. What came out of those sessions is a deliberately calm palette. A light, sand-toned leather with diamond quilting on every passenger seat; dark brown leather on the seat bases; one dark wood grain on every wooden element; a dark carpet throughout; soft white panels overhead. Decor Film Application for the wood was the customer’s own wish — a method they knew and valued from earlier AeroVisto refurbishments.
The scope left nothing out. Eight passenger positions — six executive seats and a double sidefacing seat — plus the lavatory seat, the crew seats, dado panels and table inlays; headliner, window panels and valance panels; carpet through cabin and cockpit; a new cockpit curtain, sheepskin on the cockpit seats, and the air stairs repainted with new non-textile flooring. The customer signed off on each material individually, down to the thread color.
What makes this more than a refurbishment is how it sits inside the operator’s fleet planning. One aircraft was facing a longer stay on the ground anyway. So the interiors of the two sister ships were swapped for the duration of the refurbishment, and downtime across both was kept to a minimum. It was a solution worked out between the operator and AeroVisto. The established design serves as the reference for further aircraft, including the operator’s new deliveries. AeroVisto is not a supplier Luminair calls when a cabin looks tired. It is part of a business model that took Luminair from its first flight to its thousandth in under nine months.
AeroVisto Interior Services AG is a certified Part 145 EASA Maintenance Organization and a Part 21G EASA Production Organization and delivers the needed documentation with every service. This includes the Engineering Order, STC, Major Change, Minor Change Certification, and EASA Form 1. We take care of the complete coordination of the certification, including flammability sampling and testing and interaction between our production engineering and the corresponding team of the approved EASA 21J Design Organization.
