Turkish Airlines’ New Business Class Seat Revealed (and It Looks Familiar)

A newspaper in Turkey may have just leaked the first images of Turkish Airlines’ hotly anticipated and mysterious new business class seats. Airline officials have teased features of the new lie-flat seats for months, even suggesting the possibility of private suites with doors, but so far, the flag-carrier has declined to publicly unveil the final product.

Turkish Airlines officials have teased its promised new business class product for months, but the airline has so far steadfastly refused any attempts to get a a sneak peak at plans for the updated business class seat. A newspaper in Turkey may have just spoiled the carrier’s big reveal.

Turkish Airlines has worked hard to build a buzz around plans for the business class cabins it will use as new aircraft are delivered and enter service. Airline officials released a floor plan for the new cabin designs and revealed that every seat will have aisle access, but other details have been sparse thus far.

In September, Chief Marketing Officer Ahmet Olmuştur suggested the design plans for the business class cabins on new Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 planes, due to begin entering service in 2019, are likely to include private suites with doors. Although the executive said at the time that final specs for the updated business class seats were not yet finalized, he noted that “high privacy is our priority,” and said the possibility of access to the seats through a private door was a strong likelihood.

Now, it seems a Turkish newspaper has leaked images of the new cabin designs putting an end to the speculation. The photographs, first spotted by the travel bloggers at One Mile at a Time, appear to show private lie-flat seats (though without the promised privacy door).

The sleek seats look to have an exceptional amount of personal storage and ample room to spread out. The published photographs indicate that the airline stuck with plans for a staggered seating chart – with each seat having direct access to the aisle.

Simple Flying notes that, with the exception of the Turkish Airline logo and some fashionable flourishes, the business class cabin likely looks familiar to frequent flyers. The airline’s business class seats appear to be nearly identical to the new business class seats currently employed by Singapore Airlines.

If the published photos do, in fact, capture Turkish Airlines’ new business class cabin, the inevitable comparison with Singapore Airlines won’t likely be unwelcome at all. Singapore’s latest cabin configurations have become something of the gold standard in terms of offering luxury air travel experiences.

Turkish Air is scheduled to take delivery of more than a dozen Boeing 787-900 aircraft and a similar number of Airbus A350 planes over the next five years. According to Olmuştur, the new aircraft will enter service outfitted with the new business class configurations, but he noted that there are no current plans to retrofit planes already in service with the updated cabins.

[Photos: Turkish Airlines]