The hues of Australian sunsets and sunrises will be enjoyed by airline passengers thousands of metres in the air and hundreds of kilometres from home through a new lighting system aimed at reducing jet lag.
A collaboration between the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, Qantas and Caon Design Office has created new circadian-smart airplane cabin lighting to improve health and wellbeing in the air.
Associate Professor Sveta Postnova said the evidence-based lighting design would be used on Qantas’s ultra-long-haul flights and could reduce passengers’ jetlag by aligning their body clocks to their destination’s time zone while still flying.
Professor Postnova said the design, which included simulations of sunsets and sunrises, was a result of more than 150 hours of testing in the Airbus Customer Definition Centre in Hamburg.
“Light plays an important part in controlling our body clocks. By manipulating the timing, strength and wavelengths of light during a flight, it is possible to help passengers adapt to a destination’s time zone while in the air and reduce jetlag,” she said.
Last year the Charles Perkins Centre released preliminary findings from world-first research flights on how optimising the timing of light, meals, and exercise in-flight affected jetlag.
Now w”e are going one step further by adjusting the colour of light”
Professor Postnova said the new lighting scenarios were developed to optimise the circadian effects of light at different times during flights while accounting for the light appearance, ambience, safety, and hardware requirements on board.
He said the trial produced 12 unique lighting scenes specifically for the ultra-long-haul flights.
They include:
- Awake: A broad-spectrum blue-enriched lighting to help customers adjust to the destination time zone and help them stay alert and awake.
- Sunset: An immersive transition from a daytime mode into dark that moves through the colours of a sunset into a night sky with moonlight and slow cloud effects to relax customers and prepare them for sleep.
- Sunrise: Dynamic lighting effective for a transition from night to day that replicates an Australian sunrise rolling from the front of the cabin to the rear.
