San Gottardo

Article in La Tribune, usually the best informed serious paper on all things AF, a tender will go out to refurbish the A380 fleet with lie flat seats. However, the refurbished planes will not enter service before 2018.

The article also states that refit of the 44 Boeing 777 planes takes longer than planned because Zodiac - the supplier of the seat - has very serious production issues (so much so that American Airlines actually sues Zodiac over the delays). The A330s will be refurbished before the A380s, and have less J seats than today.

Lastly, the subtle insinuation in the article is funny, where they write that "the lie flat seat in Business, introduced by British Aiways in... 1999". The "..." is a discrete but clear hint that being almost 20 years behind competition is not exactly impressive.

Goldorak

Thank you for this excellent news San Gottardo ^
But there's something I don't understand. Why do they start a new tender and why are they questioning Zodiac as a manufacturer/supplier (outside the delay problem) ? Does it mean it will not be the same BEST seat in the A332 and A388 as in the 777 fleet ?

brunos

One could not tender in 2014 for A380/A330 seats that "might" or "might not" be ordered and installed from 2018. To tender, you need to give some rather firm details on what you want. Waiting till 2016 makes sense.

The same seat cannot fit in an optimal way on all ac. For example, CX uses the Cirrus seat (not the lighter/simpler AF version) on its 777 and A330. But the seats are slightly different (narrower on 330).
It seems that Zodiac has been overwhelmed by its success and had serious production problems. If he lose AF after losing AA, that will be bad for them.

PS: Again, could the moderators update or remove the wiki on 777 deployment. One day it will become right as time passes by and more planes are retrofitted. But it has been overly optimistic for months. Is there an AF gremlin?

JOUY31

Unless I am mistaken, any registered poster can update the wiki.
I suppose this is a rhetorical question.

orbitmic

I thought updating wikis on FT requires a certain post count? However I thought it was pretty low (like maybe 1000 or something?) so all of us regular posters here certainly could if we find inconsistencies, it's not a mods task list!!

To Goldorak: my understanding is that AF always said they would fit new flat seats on A380s at some point but that it would also be different ones just like what they intend to do for P. It seems AF is going the way of DL and AA of tailoring seat types to aircraft types to optimise the comfort/efficiency compromise.

Goldorak

Thank you for your explanations.

JOUY31

Thanks for the correction .

As mentioned at the top of the wiki:

orbitmic

A very low requirement indeed!!

ticino

What about quality problems? On the first leg of my last trip my original seat was broken so i was moved to another seat at the airport. My new seat had some very ugly tape holding some piece on the side together. I suppose some planes have been retrofitted for a while, so the seats aren't "new" any more, but as I was expecting the "new" seats I was disappointed.

Goldorak

There is an interesting on-going discussion on airliners.net about the retrofit of AF A380.
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/6629339/

Post 67 is written from an AF cabin crew who explains that :
- the BEST J seat of the 777 fleet does not fit on the UD of the A380 in 1-2-1 config because too narrow. This explain why AF has always mentioned that the A388 was difficult to retrofit, but I never understood why.
- there was a plan to move F upstairs (I heard that several times) but this plan is abandoned because the new F seat is too heavy for the upper deck. I believe they may also face the same width issue as for the J seat.

So knowing that, I don't know why they don't move J downstairs behind F, and put W at the front of UD ?

brunos

CX has a full version of the Zodiac Cirrus seat on its LH A330. It is a bit narrower and less angled toward the front. I don't see why AF could not install their light version of the cirrus seat in the same plane. But it could be that the position of the galley makes is impractical in terms of losing a row of seats.
The UD of A380 is probably as wide as A330 ( I could be wrong), so again, the problem might be the current position of galleys.

Zembla

I reckon a swap like that would bring the number of total seats further down.

brunos

Zodiac Aerospace is really in trouble over their customized J seats.
A new profit warning made the stock price lose over 20% on Thursday. Apparently, they have not solve their technical problems on the A350 and CX has been awaiting delivery of its A350 for weeks because of a seat issue. AA is suing them. Airbus banned them to submit bids their A330neo. AF has complained about delays...

Goldorak

And here we go again : the retrofit of the A380 fleet is delayed to 2019-2020
so we'll have the NEV3 seats around for a couple of extra years, or may be they will at least put the NEV4 in the 6 concerned frames.
The only good news is that the A332 retrofit is still on track to start during the winter 2017-2018.

Regarding the B777 fleet, the article of La Tribune mentions 36 frames retrofitted with a target at 44 for mid-2017.

http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-...le-600791.html

orbitmic

Frankly, that's pathetic. AF don't realise that much of their investment in the new BEST cabin becomes worthless when people won't book them for fear of having an antediluvian J seat on part of their trip. I Often book open jaws, and for me, if it's guaranteed BEST one way and NEV the other, that just becomes a "no, thank you".