ST Engineering today announced that its Commercial Aerospace business has received the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for its cabin lavatory solution, ACCESS, which is currently designed for installation on the Airbus A320 family.

Developed with passengers with reduced mobility (PRMs) in mind, ACCESS is the world’s first lavatory solution that can be expanded to bring about 40 per cent more space to accommodate a passenger in a wheelchair and an accompanying caregiver. Following the successful certification for implementation on the A320 aircraft, ST Engineering is working next to make ACCESS available on the Boeing 737 platform. The design of ACCESS for Boeing 737 has already been completed, with certification being targeted for 2024.

Ling Meng Geah, Director Programme Office, Cabin Interiors and Engineering Solutions at ST Engineering, said, “The EASA certification marks a significant milestone for us in bringing to market a viable cabin interior solution that makes air travel more inclusive. As we work towards more certifications and extending the solution to more aircraft platforms, we hope that like-minded operators will jump onboard with the adoption of ACCESS so that as many passengers with reduced mobility as possible can benefit from it.”

To minimise retrofitting costs and barriers to adoption for operators, ACCESS has been designed for easy installation, requiring no reduction in seat count and galley space while accommodating existing structural attachment points as well as electrical and system connections. Once installed, the ACCESS lavatory can also be readily deployed within seconds by individual crew members and easily returned to its original state when not in use. The human-centric design of ACCESS has been developed to fulfil all the proposed requirements by the U.S. Department of Transport to increase accessibility for lavatories on narrowbody aircraft.

Earlier this year, ST Engineering entered into an LOI with Vaayu Group (Vaayu) to provide the latter with 20 units of ACCESS for installation on Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 aircraft, making Vaayu a launch customer for the innovative cabin interior solution.