Originally Posted by
LDVFlyer
Not so subjective.
Zodiac is now marketing/selling Polaris as it own product, Optima. It claims the Optima (Polaris) seat allows customers at least 15% more seat capacity over the standard business class product (e.g., Cirrus).
That 15% had to come from somewhere --- elbow room, storage/console room, pitch, privacy, sameness (every seat the same), etc.
It remains to be seen where Zodiac places this product in its lineup. But I dare say it will not displace Cirrus at the top.
You can't claim a significant measure of objectivity. It's got some issues. The first is that Zodiac is saying "generally get a 10-15% increase in the number of seats", so not >15%.
http://apex.aero/2017/04/05/acumen-z...ptima-solution
That's marketing talk anyway. In real-life, UA's configuration isn't out of line for capacity. It holds 28 seats in the front section of the 77W. Since the space between door 1 and 2 is the same on both the 772 and 773, there's plenty of real-world comparisons. Obviously the layout of lavs, galleys, etc. affect this, but we can compare against near identical layouts. DL fits 26 herringbone. AC fits 26 or 28 herringbone. AF goes with 28 herringbone. OZ with a staggered product fits 24 in a layout leaving less room for seats. 15% or more would mean that UA's 28 seats would have fit less than <24 in the same space if they picked a different seat. Not what we've seen in real-life. At best they added about two seats, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because...
The second problem is the claim that it has to come from personal space. That makes incorrect assumptions. The first is that current business seats are 100% efficient. That is, every possible square inch of space is used positively. We're getting closer to 100% in the latest designs, but there's still space to be gained. The standard herringbone and staggered styles aren't perfect users of space. The second wrong assumption is that the room for more seats can't come from the aisle or aisle access space. Take the aisle. The upper deck of the 747 is nice, but do we really need that much aisle width? No.
A third issue I see is that all the seats being the same is automatically better. It's true that the staggered designs have winners and losers, but if one half are a 10 and the other half are an 8, is that any worse than all 9s? Very subjective. And UA's seat allows for true window and couples seating too.
And there's other advantage of the new Optima style. It should allow this same design to fit more cabin widths without a significant loss in space. There won't be the variation among airplane types. And we haven't touched how the new UA seat is reported to have nice little touches, and we know it has a good screen (that you can watch 100% of the time) and cloth seating. Those are elements DL's current seats don't have.
Aisle access is something I believe is objectively better. Beyond that, preferences comes heavily into play.