manord

Exactly. I've been lucky enough to fly a fair range of different airlines' business class seats and a window CW seat is still one of the most private. Also, CW window seats are backward facing, which is a big plus for getting best sleep due to the normal in-flight angle of the aircraft.

About the only thing I'd change is storage for specs and a water bottle.

Of course, the CW aisle seats are much less impressive.

As an aside, why can't lie flat seats be designed to be parallel to the expected horizon (i.e. gravitationally flat), rather than the usual parallel to the aircraft floor, so that they can be effectively flat for the passenger when in use?

rockflyertalk

I guess it will come to a point when doors become the norm (if BA go for it also) and people will moan that a seat doesn't have a door. The tipping point will probably happen, its just a matter of when. People weren't 'fussed' when there weren't flat beds, now people want/expect flat beds. I can see the same happening with doors being a betting man!

gliderpilot

stevie

I am amazed BA has kept the new seat under wraps so well.
I really hope they roll this out fleet wide in a timely fashion and I may well use BA on a regular basis.

Cap'n Benj

subject2load

Raffles

PrimaVista

"Super Club" it must surely be then..

etiene

The door in J probably won't reach saturation purely due to the extra inch or so per seat that it uses up. Reverse herringbone seats are very clever exercises in tessellating people such that all can lie down and reach the aisle while using the minimum possible seat pitch. This of course leads to such compromises as the foot coffins, whereby one's feet might safely reside under one's neighbour's champagne. The key variable available to the designers in reverse herringbone configurations is the angle of the seat to the plane axis, but [I think at OMAAT on this very topic] the addition of a door was considered to be an inch too far for reverse herringbones in 787/A330 cabins.

I think it has also been quietly mentioned that the Q-Suite is not going be fitted to 787 or upper-deck A380 due to width - of course that seat does not have the seat-axis angle to play with, being a fore-aft design. This was a change from the initial plan to have a slightly redesigned version for the narrower cabins. Quite what QR do with those we may find out soon, if they are actually going to take delivery of their 789 order at anything close to the original schedule.

One advantage for BA of taking e.g. a Super Diamond with a door for the A350/777 would be the ability to retain commonality by fitting the same seat without the door to the 787/A380UD. That would create another interesting conundrum for the A380 though - if the existing layout were kept then BA woud have a LD space capable of taking suites and an UD space only capable of taking open seats...

T8191

I find the technical discussions very interesting. It will certainly be a challenge to present ‘fleet commonality’ from the customer’s viewpoint. The FT discussions about ‘which seat’ will presumably evolve into ‘which aircraft’.

etiene

There will certainly be several years worth of overlap. At the rate things change in these things fleetwide commonality might be a silly thing to aim for - BA have this now and are oft attacked for being "behind the times". Introducing an updated design every few years at least allows one to claim one is "up to date" even if few actually fly in the latest and greatest. And if the expected life of the seat is less than the expected life of the aircraft, then they can be brought up to spec at whatever interval that happens to be [10 years seat v 30 years aircraft...?]

The new seat is going on the A350 and a couple of refitted 777s to start - but has it been mentioned whether the 78Xs will get the new seat too...? I think they're due from 2020?

orbitmic

JL J and KE J also offer excellent privacy. Window seats compare well with BA CW but other seats are a lot more private than CW non-window seats.

I agree with you that CW window seats are very good, so if the CW cabin was all made of windows, it would be great, but unfortunately, they only typically represent 25-30% of total J seats and I personally find the aisle seats extremely expose, much more so than the Cirrus one that you mention.

T8191

orbitmic ... I am always in an aisle seat, both l/h ans s/h, so that My Lady acquires some degree of protection from the masses. And it bothers me not!! Easy access to the loo, easy conversation with CC (given my hearing deficiency) ... and I’m not doing anything that requires me to be ‘private’

Everyone has different needs or desires, of course, but aisle seats don’t bother me at all.

subject2load

orbitmic

But unless I remember incorrectly, you actually prefer AA to BA nowadays so while it doesn't bother you, I gather that you do find it less good than the AA equivalent?