Tag Archives for business class.
Occasionally readers question why doors are necessary in business class, going so far as to suggest doors make a seat feel claustrophobic. It’s a more expensive value proposition for airlines. Why has everyone seemingly jumped off this cliff?
Not to be left behind, Air France will retrofit 12 Boeing 777s with a new business class offering doors. They expect that it will begin flying in September, first on the New York JFK – Paris route. The planes won’t have first class, so presumably will swap with existing Boeing 777-200 frequencies that do not offer first either.
I flew British Airways to Paris in business class with my wife and daughter. Our return trip was on Air France. I booked (3) seats Paris – Houston for 66,500 Air France KLM Flying Blue miles + $383.17 apiece.
These were miles I already had sitting in my account from a cancelled trip Austin – Amsterdam roundtrip at the start of the pandemic.
This represents innovative thinking on the part of American to balance their desire for a top shelf product (business class suites with doors on a narrowbody aircraft) without taking up a lot of real estate on the plane
Chris Matyszczyk is known for taking my airline leaks and sensationalizing them. Here, though he takes word of American Airlines business class seats coming with doors on the airline’s new delivery Boeing 787-9s and uses that to pull his very best Christopher Elliott, which is to say taking a travel story he doesn’t understand and doing his best to turn it into an allegory about class warfare and socialism of the North Korean variety.
We’re not just looking at a new seat, but also more premium seats. I wrote last fall that American Airlines is planning to put more business class seats on planes. That’s true both for their widebodies and also their Airbus A319s.
We’re getting some sense now just what this means from two separate recent reports that I’ve confirmed.
Gone or on the way out are Boeing 777-300ERs, 777-200LRs, and Airbus A330s. Gone as well the Airbus A380s featuring one of the world’s best first class products. Their long haul fleet instead will consist of Boeing 787s, 777-9s (when those are eventually ready), and Airbus A350s. Only a subset of Boeing 787s will even offer a first class cabin.
Etihad has finally revealed their Airbus A350 with new business class – or at least photos have been shared, rather than the airline officially releasing them.
Legacy US Airways planes were heavily skewed towards lots of economy seats. US Airways didn’t sell a lot of premium seats, and when they did they sold those seats cheaply, which matched both their route network and their inflight product.
When US Airways management took over American Airlines they set out to take business class seats out of planes and add seats to lower cabins. Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja suggests this needs to change.
United Airlines and Lufthansa have a $1500 roundtrip fare in business class between the U.S. and Europe. This allows travel between much of the U.S. and most of the places you’ll go in Europe as long as you begin travel by the end of February.
Emirates started selling ‘basic business class’ fares last year. Qatar Airways came out with this, restricting access to lounges and to advance seat selection on the cheapest business class tickets. And the latest entrant into this game is Finnair, and their restrictions are absolutely brutal.
What’s really interesting here is whether airlines can make Basic Business Class work as a way to generate more revenue. While Basic Economy has caught on and had mixed results, it’s going to be a lot harder to do with Business Class and that strategy will probably cost an airline more than it’ll generate in incremental revenue. Your cable television bill helps explain why.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
