Originally Posted by
Smirnoff
I have to disagree with this. You need to have flexible seating within Europe or it just doesn't work. How else do you do it if you sometimes need 3 rows and sometimes 13 rows of CE on a 320. And sometimes 4 rows and sometimes 25 rows of CE on a 767?
In reality it would be nice to have 2-2 seating. But as long as I am in my usual seat, then the 2-3 seating doesn't bother me, as it's only non-status/non-OLCIed passengers who are going to get stuck with the middle seats.
Hmm, you may be right but there is no reason why the LH style seating (which works really well) could not be adopted.
For proper 2+2 seating there would need to be a rethink in terms of pricing and yield management. Essentially a fixed 2+2 cabin should be able to be sold for far more than the current flexible CE. I would pay a lot more for a real business cabin on the longer shorthaul routes I fly (typically LIS, MAD, FCO or LIN). A real business cabin would limit the number of C PAX but this limitation could be recovered via higher fares. It would also allow effective planning for onboard service. I know that DME is an anomoly but do you really think that PAX receive a "business class" service experience when flying on an aircraft with 9+ rows full of CE? I don't recall ever receiving particularly good service in these circumstances.