You close the door behind you and the cabin noise drops away. Inside ANA’s THE Room FX on the Boeing 787-9, the space feels less like a seat and more like a private room at altitude. The door a rare feature on the narrower 787 fuselage glides shut with quiet precision, creating complete visual and acoustic separation from the aisle. What remains is your own enclosed environment-a wide, sofa-like seat that transforms into a fully flat bed, generous storage, and surfaces finished in soft, calming materials chosen for long-haul comfort.
All Nippon Airways unveiled THE Room FX at the Paris Air Show, and it quickly distinguished itself through engineering that solved one of the toughest challenges in modern business class design. Developed in close collaboration with Safran Seats, the product adapts the successful “The Room” concept from ANA’s Boeing 777 fleet to the 787-9’s more compact cross-section. Safran’s engineers achieved this by using advanced lightweight composite structures and a highly optimised mechanism that allows a full privacy door without sacrificing the generous width or the signature 787 cabin advantages of higher humidity and larger windows. The result is one of the most enclosed and spacious business class suites currently available on any Dreamliner.
What makes THE Room FX stand out as the winner of the APEX 2026 Best Cabin Innovation award is how completely it delivers a true suite experience in a fuselage that has traditionally limited such ambitions. Safran’s design team focused on three key engineering breakthroughs. First, a compact yet robust door mechanism that maintains structural integrity while adding minimal weight, critical on the 787, where every kilogram affects long-range performance. Second, a highly flexible seat architecture that allows the unit to function as an open lounge-style sofa when the door is retracted or as a fully private space when closed, with seamless conversion to a lie-flat bed. Third, thoughtful integration of passenger flow and storage, ensuring that even with the door, movement in and out of the suite remains easy and the overall cabin does not feel cramped.
These details matter because they address what frequent long-haul travellers increasingly value most: genuine privacy without compromise. On many 787 business class products, the lack of a door and narrower space can make the cabin feel more like an open seating area than a personal retreat. THE Room FX changes that equation. The engineering allows each passenger to control their environment completely, working with the door open for a social feel or closing it entirely for rest or focused work. The award recognition reflects how Safran and ANA managed to push the boundaries of what is possible in a single-aisle-wide body while preserving the Dreamliner’s passenger-friendly qualities.
ANA will introduce THE Room FX on three new internationally configured 787-9s entering the fleet in 2026, with initial deployment on key long-haul routes. For passengers, the experience is immediately noticeable: the door creates a sense of calm and control that turns a long flight into something closer to a private journey. The engineering behind that door, lightweight, reliable, and space-efficient, is what earned the product its recognition as the year’s standout cabin innovation. In an era when airlines compete aggressively on business class privacy, ANA and Safran have delivered a solution that feels both technically advanced and genuinely useful at 40,000 feet.