Turkish Airlines Teases Suites with Doors in New Business Class Cabins

New York, NY, USA - November 3, 2013: Boeing 767 Turkish Airlines takes off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on November 3, 2013. Boeing 767 is the largest airplane powered by two engines.

This week, Turkish Airlines CMO Ahmet Olmuştur told the Australian Business Traveler that, in the name of passenger privacy, the carrier is seriously considering suites with doors when the all-new business class cabins enter service next year on the airline’s soon-to-be-delivered Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 aircraft.

In an interview with the Australian Business Traveler, Turkish Airlines Chief Marketing Officer Ahmet Olmuştur indicated that design plans for business class cabins on new Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 planes, due to begin entering service next year, are likely to include private suites with doors.

The airline executive said that final specs for the updated business class seats haven’t been finalized yet, but he noted that “high privacy is our priority,” and the possibility of access to the seats through a private door is very much on the table. He also confirmed that the configuration will allow for direct aisle access from every seat.

“We are still working on with our design partner for many different features such as individual enclosed storage areas and 44-inch knee distance,” Olmuştur told the magazine.

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. He said, however, there are no plans at this time to retrofit planes already in service with the updated cabin designs.

In other news, the airline has selected Rockwell Collins to provide MiQ business class seats for the carrier’s new Boeing 737 MAX and Airbus A321neo aircraft. While private doors are not a possibly for the business class cabins of these much smaller aircraft, Rockwell Collins officials said the MiQ seats were chosen to allow “us to work closely with Turkish Airlines to provide a customized configuration that includes a new privacy feature.”

Those sentiments were echoed by the airline.

“We are very excited to introduce our latest business class seats in our new generation 167 narrow body aircraft,” Olmuştur said of the business class cabin designs for the new fleet of single-aisle short and medium-haul aircraft.  “As we continue to take firm steps to increase our passengers’ comfort to an even higher level, we now place those state-of-the-art seats, having special features such as seat back inflight entertainment screens, retractable privacy panels, accessible personal stowage and power outlets, in our new medium-haul fleet.”