The layout of the SA’s cabin made in 1976.

During the restoration and refitting of the aft cabin in 2016, in our article written at that time, we mainly talked about the painting of the side panels and the lighting without mentioning the rest of the arrangement which was installed in the SA in 1976 by Air France.

On May 20, 1976 when the SA arrived at Air France Maintenance Division (DM in French), the fuselage was completely empty, except for the side panels and the floor. The test equipment as well as the aft cabin with the 32 leather seats and the famous table were dismantled and certainly reused to complete the layout of the F-WTSB currently on display at Aéroscopia in Toulouse.

To make this long empty tube "presentable" to future ADP visitors, according to the little information we have, Air France’s technical services reused one of the existing layout models.

The layout models are used to define the best functionality, comfort and presentation of the cabin of future production aircraft.

With great ingenuity, the AF teams produced all of the brackets using metal angles from plywood, all fixed to the frames of the aircraft.

This internal frame allowed the cables to be routed for the sound system and the lighting power supply with commercially available neon tubes.

In addition to the lighting, this frame supports the "hand luggage compartment".

A clever system allows the assembly to be screwed from the rear in the high position. On production planes this hand luggage compartment has been significantly modified compared to this wooden model.

With a small lock we made this door functional to have good access to the LED strip lighting transformer.

We can say that the general aspect is really delusional.

To complete the layout, they have made above each seat a fairly realistic copy of the aerators, lighting and the call button and loudspeakers of the PA (Public-Address) (the public-address system, the sound system in the cabin which allows the crew to make announcements).

Maxime took advantage of the work in the cabin to bring home some "vacation homework" to redo the painting of the set of "fittings", the result of which is as follows.

Here you can see the housing, the lower part of which opens to drop the oxygen masks in an emergency.

The representation of the buttons allowing varying the intensity and the individual lights, the two call buttons and in the centre the call cancel button.

And the back of the decor representing the individual lighting.

To keep all this "decoration" in place on one side, two small pins that slip into a groove ...

And on the other side a magnet that holds it in place on a rail attached to the wooden support.

And here is the result with the grille installed it looks like a real PA speaker.

To fill the gap between the different boxes representing the lights, compartments and oxygen masks, spacers are attached and adjusted in length.

With this very careful editing produced by the Air France team, the result obtained is worthy of a perfect cinema set very close to reality. The final goal was achieved and it allowed to present a layout really resembling production planes.