Designing the interior of a private jet is no small feat. Some customers have a clear vision, and our Designers use their expertise in aircraft interiors to bring it to life. Others entrust our Designers to lead the creative process from start to finish. In this case, the customer had a vision that met some very specific design preferences. Senior Lead Designer Molly Pfeiffer used her years of experience to take the inspiration he provided to create a masterfully-designed interior.
“Molly did a great job interpreting the client’s vision and bringing it to life,” says Senior Completions Sales Representative George Bajo. “She helped guide him into what would look good together, and in the end, created one of the most amazing interiors I’ve ever seen.”
The transformation of this Gulfstream G650 is one of many large-cabin Gulfstream interior refurbishments completed across our network of maintenance, repair, and overhaul facilities. It adds to our growing collection of world-class refurbishments for an expanding list of clients.
For this project, skilled artisans at our Provo, Utah, facility transformed the aircraft into an ultra-customized masterpiece, featuring specific colors, fully customized seats, rich Kosipo veneer, and a meticulously handcrafted carpet.
The cabin seating was a vital part of the design and was inspired by the owner’s personal briefcase.
“The owner has a briefcase that he absolutely loves,” says Molly. “He loves the color; he loves the grain, and simply everything about it. He wanted the color and grain of the seats to be an exact match, so we sent the physical briefcase to our leather vendor to ensure we nailed that color.”
There’s a calming and inviting aspect to the seats. They’re a nice shade of orange that is not too bright, but still makes a statement. The color isn’t a tangerine orange, not a burnt orange, and not that iconic deep orange associated with high fashion. In fact, there’s not a word to describe it. It’s a truly custom color that was made specifically to meet the client’s tastes.
Not to be outdone by the leather, another defining feature of the project was a highly custom Kosipo, an African Mahogany veneer, that was applied horizontally. This horizontal application is not the typical installation method for veneer, posing a challenge for the team. The design had to seamlessly blend the veneer’s dynamic grain pattern with the rest of the cabin.
Despite the challenges, the decision to apply the veneer horizontally enhanced the interior’s visual flow.
“Achieving perfect alignment across bulkheads and pocket doors required extreme precision from the Cabinet team, a challenge they executed flawlessly,” says Molly.
The visual elements of the cabin flooring can make or break an aircraft interior’s design. The seats were truly unique, and the veneer added an impressive dynamic, but the carpet was everything to the customer. It created the cabin’s focal point.
Similar to the seat color, the owner had a very specific color for the carpet—a rich, chocolate brown. Finalizing the carpet design proved to be the most challenging part of the process. They reviewed multiple options, but none quite captured what they saw in their mind’s-eye.
After much back and forth, Molly presented an option that simulated a flowing river down the center of the cabin. It took weeks of sampling, but the moment they saw this design, the decision was instant—“YES.” It was perfect.
With all of the colors defined and mapped out for how the river would flow through the cabin, a quick trip to visit the carpet vendor, Scott Group Studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, resulted in final approval, and the carpet went into production.
The result is a handmade, custom carpet that moves your eye throughout the cabin. The field is 100% wool, and the river portion is a mix of wool and silk. The river flows organically through the cabin between the seats, and is planked by orange silk that complements the seat colors.
“We were very intentional with how we wanted the river to move through the cabin” says Molly. “We looked at many different options of how the river could flow in the aisle while not getting lost under the seats.”
On incoming, the owner wanted to know if an additional reading light could be added above the right- hand #2 VIP seat. He wanted this light to match an existing style he had seen elsewhere. The challenge? A custom reading light bezel for a G650 didn’t exist, and creating one required FAA certification—a lengthy process.
“We had to fabricate our own bezel housing to meet the request,” explains Engineering Crew Lead Drew Govert. “By collaborating with Sales, Quality, and Production, Engineering developed a design and certification plan that met the vision without delaying the schedule.”
This process involved 3D scanning and slicing, SolidWorks modeling, 3D-printed prototyping, custom manufacturing through DMS (Duncan Manufacturing Solutions), and production installation.
“We were able to 3D scan the existing bezels, and slice them in DesignX,” Drew explains. “After importing the model to SolidWorks, I was able to customize the part to achieve the exact look we wanted.”
Using a 3D printer, the team printed a half-dozen prototypes, altering the trim bezel design/function and honing in on the light seating in the bezel, all while keeping in mind design for manufacturing constraints to meet DMS requirements. Using engineering data and drawings, DMS was able to fabricate the bezel. The Interior and Install teams integrated the light into the existing CMS switch panel controls, all while keeping the planned schedule.
“The final product looked just how we envisioned,” says Drew. “We were able to utilize our 3D scanning and printing technology to the fullest.”
The owner’s representative said that she was speechless when she saw the interior for the first time.
“The refurbishment makes the airplane feel bigger and more open,” she says. “Every small detail was completed to perfection, and it absolutely exceeded our expectations. When I was doing my final walkthrough, I called the owner and told him I was just speechless. The airplane was everything that he had envisioned plus some, and all aspects of the design came together masterfully.”
She went on to say, “Every department within the Duncan Aviation team understood and exceeded our expectations. Their attention to detail, focus on the project, the deadline, and the small details made this refit possible.”