Originally Posted by
rhysflies
Again, it sounds like you don't actually understand how these seats are designed. Elements, which is what Aria is based on, is about the third or fourth design iteration of Collins' super popular Diamond / Super Diamond seat. It's probably one of the most popular seats out there and has been used from everyone from Qatar Airways, BA, Etihad, Starlux and more. Cirrus (which is CX's current business class) is probably the only other seat that has sold in similar volumes.
For business class, footwells are fundamentally an area of compromise because of the way seats are being tessellated. If you want a full width, uninterrupted seat then pay for first class. In business class, airlines are trying to layer passengers so that one person's feet are under your side console table. This allows them to sell the seats at a lower cost than first class and offer the sort of mass affluent business class seats we have to day. Yes, it's a compromise but it's not as if seat manufacturers and airlines aren't aware of this or trying to innovate in this space.
Oh and by the way - even Qsuite, which many people consider the world's best business class, has a surprisingly tight footwell.
It's not like the process itself requires the production of an inferior seat. All you've told us is the inferior seat is a product of industry-wide trends and profit maximization, which isn't exactly endearing to customers.
We have a current seat customers like, and a new one they like less. Sure, the new one may be comparable to other airlines - but that's a problem when you're trying to outcompete them. It's an especially bad problem when it means the narrative about your airline is the seat got worse (whereas that's not the case for others) and especially bad when your airline is trying to rebuild its stature in the industry and is trying to overcome other problems like unloved food and green crew.
What we're going to see is customers who can pay for J choose to go to airlines with the same seat but better food/crew/schedules etc. or at least be indifferent about preferring CX. Saying "this is how things are now, get used to it or pay more" is not going to help with that. Maybe the strategic priority right now should not have been stuffing as many people as possible in J, especially since the airline is profitable with the current configuration.