Hi all - I've been pondering the changes BA have made to their Brown Club World (BCW) cabin that's fitted to their A380, and also their 787.
The opportunity to experience it first hand last week on the training flight to Frankfurt was an interesting experience, and as I put together a trip report (
obligatory plug to video) I realised that these seats are a decent step up from the previous seats (NGCW) but not every change is a good one.
There's quite a lot of detail about the CW cabin that hasn't been written here before, so I thought I would start a thread for people to share their experiences as we see BCW in the real world over the next few months.
Personally, these were the summarised notes I jotted down for my review:
Improvements since the last Club World seat- Better colour scheme
- Better cooked food
- Drinks served by hand, rather than a trolley
- Redesigned footstool is more robust
- More seats have side bins for extra storage
- Privacy dividers are now automatically lowered whenever the inflight power sockets are switched off. When the divider is down, you are face to face with your neighbour - which is now during boarding, taxi and take-off, as well as for the 20 minutes prior to landing and taxi - rather than the 4 minutes of the safety briefing as before. Overall, solo travellers will be face to face with a stranger for an hour each flight
- Overhead lights have been removed - when the cabin lights are dimmed, you will need to use the small spotlight by your shoulder to light up your books / laptop. This lights up a very small area, meaning it will be a struggle to work after lights-out. The spotlight is unchanged from the current seat.
- The floor (especially around the lower deck middle seats) is incredibly bumpy and uneven. This is the first time these seats have been fitted to an Airbus, and the securing mechanism to link them to the floor is a bodge of a design. This may cause problems for older passengers, when it is dark or when you are a bit tipsy (but obviously none of us here on FT
)
- BA's unique 'Z-shape' reclining position - where the seat reclines and the footstool tilts up - has changed with the new footstool design, and is nowhere near as comfortable as the old one
- BA have missed an opportunity to utilise all the space - to keep a consistent design between decks and aeroplanes, the seats are all the same width - and the lower deck aisles are wider. It would have been possible to make a new, wider seat and had a smaller aisle instead.
From my perspective, it's a case of three steps forward and two steps back. It'll be interesting to see if there are any quick fixes BA can apply this year, such as changing the privacy divider rules!
You'll find the full review and video showing the cabin in detail
here.