FlyerTalker39574

Club Europe seats are fairly poor when compared to a WT+ seat and not really a good offering for first class passengers with connecting flights via LHR.
They're also not a good offering for highest status passengers and those that have paid the high flexible fares, is it not time to fit the A319-A321 short haul fleet with some better seats 2-2 18.5" wide at least to rows 1 or 2?

ahmetdouas

No, because Europe has low standards with Business Class so BA can get away with the seats they currently provide. Don't blame BA, blame the competition!

ajeleonard

Not when every European airline has the same product, no. Not to mention the loss of flexibility a fixed cabin creates.

bhbloke

Majority of flights far too short to need the extra space and expense of new seating.

Also it will mess up the fleet utilisation for BA, having certain aircraft tied to certain routes?

ratypus

Absolutely never going to happen - so many reasons:


- cost
- BA currently doing the exact opposite and making CE seating tighter (and they fairly recently phased out the last "old style" CE seats which were at least different to the economy ones)
- fleet and route variance: some routes & times have way, way more CE seats than others on the same aircraft...I have seen CE cabins of 2 rows (8 seats) and 12 rows (48 seats), which you can only do if all the seats are the same and the curtain just moves
- no real need...very few airlines in Europe offer "proper" short-haul business class for connections: I recently did connections to long-haul business on Swiss & Austrian, and exactly same as BA in terms of seating & product: BA will never do this if the competition don't require it...
- many more reasons...


Never going to happen. Yes, it is daft that even a paying First passenger gets lumped in CE seating but really that's the deal everywhere in Europe now with only a very few exceptions

layz

I think the idea is that the first couple of rows would be first allocated to connecting F passengers, then based on status and after that would if still available have a higher seat selection fee.

So it wouldn't be the Club Europe cabin it would be premium seating within the cabin.

Not sure whether it'd work or not.

:D!

Aegean has this, I think the first 3 or 4 rows have lots more legroom, but the curtain can still move, e.g. J to/from LHR is generally 5+ rows, but other destinations it may be 2 rows or fewer and the first rows of Y get lucky

FlyerTalker39574

Yes exactly what I'm thinking. Note I just mentioned a wider seat and not an increased pitch. It could be just seats 1A and C or 1D and F. BA first long haul is here to stay at LHR, short haul connecting to these flights should be better for highest status passengers.

Often1

Don't blame the competition. Blame the market.

BA, just like other carriers, meets the demands of its customers.

For a variety of reasons, European customers don't want to pay for a better soft product, such as 2-2 seating with greater pitch.

There is also tremendous variability between the way in which aircraft are utilized. Thus, while there might be paying customers for a real J product on longer European services, that likely is not true for micro-haul services to PAR, BRU & AMS. This would mean having two fleets. One equipped for ATH and one equipped for AMS. Then massive moaning when an aircraft substitution results in fewer seats.

The real question is how many would pay a real J fare where the upgrade is the price difference, not some discount offered just to sell seats.

Ldnn1

What if there were 9+ people connecting to F, and you were the chump in the crap seat in row 3, wouldn't you be pretty peeved?

FrancisA

I would argue that it is not low standard per se; it is a product of the market.

From a business perspective, I can't see how providing special seats for F connecting passengers or GCHs makes any sense. The fare will remain the same and the contribution to the connecting flight is minimal if anything at all. Bear in mind ex-EUs are cheaper than LHR direct flights.

Would anyone fly BA because of superior CE? I doubt this is a key or clinching factor. Would the O&D market pay more for the special seats? I doubt it.

The real question is does the current CE seat work in the current market? From a business perspective the evidence seems to be yes. From my personal perspective, I am happy with the product; indeed I see it as superior to the old CE set up in many ways.

RGS5526

BA seems to be running up against capacity constraints on some routes. "Densification" in the A320 family cannot go much further and the B767 will soon be withdrawn. Increased frequency may be possible on some routes, but slots at LHR and other places are often limited, imposing another type of capacity constraint. So we get the current situation where some MAN-LHR (and vice versa) flights are sold out days in advance.

The available wide bodies are generally optimised for long-haul routes. So BA (and probably other european airlines) need something in the 300+ seat range optimised for short haul. When that appears, we may then get some decent Club Europe seats.

12939

That's not quite true.

KLM still has significantly extended leg room towards the front of the aircraft on the B737 fleet. These are used for Europe Business Class and Economy Comfort (a business class seat with economy class service, free for Flying Blue Platinum - equiv to BA Gold). It's not as good as the domestic F seats on US carriers, but it's a lot better than CE.

I'm also pretty sure that Lufthansa actually has slightly more (unadvertised) leg room in the first n rows on the short-haul Airbus fleet. Certainly my knees are not jammed into the seat in front in LH Business Class like they are in CE.

Maluku_Flyer

American customers don't either. Most of the seats are given away for free to "elites". When I fly domestic AA I often check the seat map the day before and more often than not there are just two or three others in F. After boarding completed F is full (and they often get the meal choice I would have wanted). The US airlines are just wasting money.

scottishpoet

nope

pitch and width is identical, but there is more room on the 319 than the 320


https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lu...19-100_NEK.php

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lu...20-200_NEK.php

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lu...us_A320neo.php

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lu...s_A321_NEK.php