Looking back on the dawn of long haul travel in luxurious jets, many people are shocked to learn that airlines frequently offered onboard lounges. Even grand pianos on board!
How quaint, that seems! Why would an airline ‘waste space’ with places for passengers to congregate? Modern airline executives shove as many seats into a plane as possible, even stealing space from lavatories and galleys wherever they can.
I tend to think about planes not being nearly as full back then, with higher fares and competition generally illegal at the time. But it isn’t just that. With high fares and planes still competing against ships for transatlantic travel, airlines had to offer a luxurious product in order to compete with a luxurious product.
All plane tickets were expensive in those days and many economy class jetliner passengers would have been first class ocean liner travellers.
Having a lounge on the plane would have reassured them that air travel was just as good as going by sea, allowing the airline to capture share from the ocean-going market. Many such travellers may even have expected a lounge.
Rolfe Schellenberger, one of the four American Airlines executives who gave us the first frequent flyer program, passed away during the pandemic. He was responsible for putting pianos on 747s.
Today, Qatar Airways has a bar on its Airbus A380 aircraft available to first and business class passengers.
So does Emirates, which is the biggest operator of Airbus A380 aircraft in the world.
Etihad’s A380s has a lounge area, though not nearly as useful or trafficked as its Gulf neighbors.
When U.S. airlines were looking for government protectionism, trying to keep Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar out of the U.S. or limit their growth, what they were saying was that consumers shouldn’t have choice or price competition. And their argument was that these airlines offered such a good product that it made no economic sense, and it wasn’t fair that consumers should get something so good.
In other words, they were telling you that you should go fly these airlines! But the truth of the matter was something different, even if U.S. executives couldn’t see it (or weren’t honest enough to admit it).
- Emirates has a real onboard bar product. Qatar, which offers a great business class, doesn’t except on a handful of Airbus A380s that do not fly to the United States.
- Emirates also doesn’t have a very good business class seat. Each passenger doesn’t get very much room. Personal space in American Airlines business class is greater than in Emirates business class and by a lot.
What Emirates realizes is that:
- If you take the bar space and divide it out across business class customers, they’re not really giving each passenger more space.
- The bar is an attractive feature that sets them apart. It drives their reputation.
- They can differentiate product without dedicating meaningfully more space per business class passenger. And they can do it in a way that creates a halo over their brand, driving sales even for the inferior-still business product on Boeing 777s which even lacks the bar.
There’s a competitive edge in offering onboard amenities and these can come at lower cost than most realize. That the Emirates A380 onboard showers. These take what’s effectively dead space on the aircraft (some, like Qantas, call it a ‘business class lounge’ that almost no one uses, it’s space that cannot be turned into seating) and turn it into something glamorous.
At Etihad they took this same dead space plus one first class seat and called it ‘The Residence’. It wasn’t really trading off with incremental seating to offer the most luxurious seat in the sky. That doesn’t mean it sold well, though I flew onboard where it was indeed sold to passengers. But it wasn’t nearly as costly as it seemed.
There is a market for truly premium products for airlines that strategically deliver it.
We regularly fly EKs 380s and I find those business class seats pretty good. The footwell is large and I can sleep in my side easily. Recently flew the new 777 2C layout. That seat has side bolsters and isn’t as comfortable when flat for sleeping. It has a very narrow offset footwell that is as bad as Delta’’s. The new D1 layout has a larger footwell.
That said, I think the EK screen at the seat was at least 24” wide.
The bar is a nice feature in the EK380. Nice to walk back and get a drink and or snack. I have worked occasionally on the ones with the cafe table in the bar. Wife really likes it. I’ll reroute to have the 380 when available.
I’m in Qatar next month. First time with them and so far prior to flight EK still has them beat.
I liked the 747s with the upper deck lounge. Do remember the piano in some. I recall one trip when my son was very young that the senior FA or stewardess then, said we were welcome to take my son to the lounge and let him run free. Rest of the cabin had voted to give him the lounge hoping he would wear out. :).
Yes, as an early teenager in 1971-1972, my parents took me several times on an AA 747 between JFK and SFO in coach. A cabin steward played that Wurlitzer electric piano on each flight. It was exactly the era of that YouTube. Coach also had 4-page printed menus, those funky tube earphones, and more legroom than most of today’s domestic first class flights. But that $500 ticket in 1972 is worth about $3600 today!
Gary, you forgot Korean Air ( two bars in business class, one of them thanks to a famous vodka brand)
Agree with Doug. The EK business seats are fine. How much more room does one truly need? I felt cramped in the SA ones by comparison.
The bar offers an opportunity to move around, mingle with the other passengers and the food is pretty good.
You think taking that space and dividing it up to give me a few more inches is something impressive?
So are they really Flight Attendants or something else? If the majority of your time on a 12 hr flight is doing food service how is that any different then working at TGI Fridays?
@tomri – TGI Fridays don’t crash.
Your analogy is like equating a pilot and an elevator operator. Yes, they both sit there and push buttons most of the time, but if something goes wrong, I want someone who knows what to do in an airplane in an emergency.
I remember sitting in the upstairs first class lounge of a TWA 747 having a drink with my father back in the 1970’s. It felt like such luxury but couldn’t compare to a lie flat seat of today.
@tomri-what has happened in the last few months?
JL in HND, FA’s successfully evacuated 300+ passengers in 90 seconds, everyone lived.
AS-737MAX9 Door- Door blows out, FA’s tend to passengers with portable O2 bottles.
Can your TGI Fridays Bartender do all that?
Caught an American 747 with the piano bar in the early 70s. I noted that Errol Garner, the jazz pianist was onboard. Went up to him and mentioned that he had probably played in a lot of interesting spots over the year – but had he ever played at 35,000 feet up? He was intrigued and we walked back to the lounge. He sat down and played for almost an hour, as more and more people filled up the lounge. Drinks were flowing and a great time was had by all.
Also remember the Pub that CO had on the DC-10s. Made the LAX-ORD run a lot easier, even though I had to share the Pong game that was in the lounge.
Today, you also have the bar area on Virgin Atlantic (and formerly on Virgin Australia).
AA needs a contemporary of Rolf to bring back a little if that golden age of flying…unfortunately AA’s long haul fleet is too small in terms of number of aircraft and size of
Aircraft to support this. Indeed, there IS a market, it is just limited to a smaller segment of people who may be flying for a celebratory reason or who may want to entertain on business or have the wherewithal to afford business travel at that level. Trips would be made so much more pleasant with these kinds of diversions available and certainly much more memorable! AA needs a long haul upgrade and refresh anyway….time they compete and become a world class airline!! We need one in the US.
You say “there is a market for truly premium products for airlines that strategically deliver it,” but the fact that no airlines other than the massively-oil-subsidized Middle East airlines offer these products strongly suggest that’s not true at all. Which isn’t to say that travellers shouldn’t take advantage of this largesse. I do, and everyone else who can should also. But don’t kid yourself into thinking these are real free-market innovations.
Can anyone confirm: Am I dreaming or do I recall correctly that back in the early 1970s, when I flew early morning from LGA to ORD with American, the FAs scrambled and served real egg breakfasts?Still have the red lettered VIT card from that era.
@PDT: your concluding sentence gets at the central issue. Since deregulation, airfares have fallen by over 2/3 in real terms. Since everyone paid the same fare JFK-SFO (regardless of what airline they flew) it made sense for American to have a piano bar, to distinguish themselves from their competition. Today airlines compete primarily on price, and want to cram as many paying passengers onto the plane as possible. I miss the better service and smaller crowds in the airport, but we can’t unring that bell, even if we wanted to.
@chopsticks completely agree, that there was one a lounge on the 747 and lounges mostly on A380s today does not in any way lead to the conclusion that Gary is trying to draw that “there is a market for truly premium products for airlines that strategically deliver it.” If anything what it indicates is that when a plane that is too big for the market is introduced, the load factor and / or yields on using every last inch of space for additional seats is so low that it’s not worth doing so and it’s better to try to capture more yield from already high fares from things like lounges and bars onboard. However, the market has a way of correcting for that. In the case of the 747, after deregulation, the number of passengers grew enough that removing lounges to put in more seats did make sense. In the case of the A380, every airline that bought it except for EK wanted to get rid of them and Airbus shut the program down. The A380 only got a life extension because of the 777X delays and other widebody production issues, but they are still headed for an early grave no matter how much bloggers whine about it
It’s funny to hear people try to convince other people that FA’s are some sort of professionals and not high school educated folks that go to a few days of training. Are they rigorously culled if they don’t show the ability to evacuate a plane in 90 seconds? Doubtful. It seems that most of their training is on wearing social issue pins while burying their faces in their phones and being gruff and arrogant to passengers every now and then. They are closer to TGI Fridays workers than not.
And extending that to a pilot and elevator operator is silly and was not posited in to begin with and is thus just a distraction from the original point.
Time from TSA agent to FA is about an extra day of training is my guess.
MD travel: well put. My husband flew for Continental for twenty-one years. The industry has taken a ‘nose dive’ so to speak.
Gary
You have been smoking weed
There are TWO EK business class products —— on A380 and on Boeing 777
Older product in business on the 777 is a 2-2-2 affair reclining seat affair. No flat beds
No idea about the bar situation
On A380, EK is on par / ahead of the competition. HATE cramped footwells (Turkish, AirFrance, Finnair, VIRGIN etc —— yes you)
Generally biz class seats are comfortable, offer drinks at seats and have a class leading 24” TV
Oddly —— in terms of hard product —— shocker, new British ClubWorld (business class) seat is a pleasant place to be
Odd one out: Qatar: QSuites in bc are very nice —— especially when travelling with kids. Not such a fan of airline on the whole: service is awkward, disjointed & slow, hate transiting through HAMAD INTERNATIONALans if “nice” individual bc seats don’t “wow”
SUMMARY
EK old 777 bc seats are a snooze fest, the new 777 bc seats are FAR BETTER (and I think convert to flatbed
EK A380 is a fun / comfortable / social
place to be
QATAR getting there (& still needs some…… help)
It’s funny to hear people equating airline workers to fast food waitresses when they get in an emergency situation, like losing engines to a bird strike. I expect the exact same person denigrating the flight attendant is going to be praying for a safe landing, and wishing they had paid more attention to the preflight briefing!
But I’m probably just kidding myself- he’s probably too busy trying to gather up all his carry-on luggage to haul out through the emergency exit, and insulting the staff who tell him he can’t take his precious clothes with him. Once a jerk, probably always a jerk…
WardAir flew from Canada to Hawaii with 747s. The whole upper floor was a bar and lounge. First come, first seat!