Madrid-based oneworld airline Iberia is introducing new business class suites with doors. This isn’t a future product we’ll see years down the road. It’s already flying. In fact it’s received an aircraft featuring these seats – an Airbus A350 registration EC-NXE. We’ve known this was coming since late July, but that these seats are actually in service is brand new.
Delivered to Iberia on November 29, it’s been in commercial service since Saturday it’s been flying to London, Barcelona, Dusseldorf, and Paris.
⚠️ Iberia está operando hoy uno de sus múltiples vuelos del 'Puente Aéreo' con Airbus A350-941.
Este A350 (EC-NXE), añadido hace apenas unos días a la flota de Iberia, es el primer A350 que incorpora la nueva clase Business (Recaro CL6720) de la aerolínea.📷 @cliper31 / kelual pic.twitter.com/O81x17SYEG
— Aeroinfo Barcelona-El Prat (@AeroinfoBCN) December 13, 2022
Iberia is owned by IAG, which is the parent company of British Airways and which has been installing suites with doors. The two carrier share American Airlines as a transatlantic joint venture partner which is also putting in suites. A competitive must for premium transatlantic travel at this point we’ll be seeing the same from Air France.
Interestingly Iberia isn’t using the Collins Aerospace Super Diamond seat that British Airways adopted, and that American has been using. Instead they’re using the Recaro CL6720. It should be a nice product once it’s done doing short intra-European flights and gets deployed on long haul and as the airline takes additional aircraft with these seats.
Iberia has some of the best value transatlantic business class awards as well, with roundtrips starting at just 68,000 miles and without significant fuel surcharges. Their points are easy to come by since several programs in the U.S. transfer to them directly, and since active accounts can send and receive between BA, Iberia and Qatar.
(HT: @CAsenjoEsq)
This aircraft is also one of the earliest with the Airbus A350 New Production Standard (NPS) which lightens the airframe by a couple thousand pounds by using more carbon-fiber and other advanced lightweight materials. NPS also incorporates new performance features including enhanced electronic management of the flight control surfaces and landing gear. The result of all of this is an increase in max takeoff weight that can result in 12,000 pounds of more payload or longer range.
The NPS also involves making the cabin walls thinner, adding about 4 inches to the cabin width. Airbus also moved the cockpit crew rest module access which adds more space at the front of the cabin for a larger front galley and also pushed back the rear pressure bulkhead which makes room for a larger rear galley and/or the ability to move some lavs behind the rear doors, making more room in the cabin. The sum total of all of this according to Airbus is the potential to put up to 30 more seats in the cabin if airlines choose to go with a 10 abreast coach configuration or less if they keep 9 abreast but add more seats at the front and rear of the cabin.
All told, Airbus continues to improve the A350 and Iberia has received a copy of the latest updates which are now standard for all A350s. Among US airlines, Delta just took delivery of the first of its new A350s with NPS and one more is in flight testing.
It makes one optimistic to see such improvements (if only incremental).
Now if only Iberia was not concerned with moths flying out of its wallet and spend more on its dinner product and selection between Chicago-Madrid.