Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
There was
a piece on this coming out of that Mark Nasr trip to Australia. He didn't say much one way or the other, but my read-through was that it would be evolution rather than revolution. The Super Diamond product is still competitive relative to what a lot of AC's peers are running - WS is flying a slightly updated version to AC's, BA's A350s have the same updated version plus a useless little cupboard thing and useless doors, the US3 aren't exactly doing anything revolutionary in the space, etc... I'm not sure how much commonality and economy is achieved by using a similar seat to the older product, if any, but I imagine there are some benefits - certainly in terms of consistency of product for customers, it would help. Then again, airlines do weird things. LH has a million different widebody hard products, and KL went for a conceptually similar but very different feeling seat in their 781s than their 789s, so who knows
When did XM start rolling out (wiki suggests 2006)? When did the Dream Cabin start rolling out (I believe 2014)?
If XM started to get replaced after 8 years, and we're 9 years into the Dream Cabin, and these new aircraft aren't even going to start showing up for 2 years, then I'd definitely not be surprised to see something new.
And I imagine if existing cabins are approaching the replacement point, they might want to start thinking about "next generation" rather than "same thing but not inflatable, and shoulder strap instead of airbag".