Prospero

I have been very fortunate to be able to cast my eyes on technical layouts of the new cabin configuration of BA's Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Having now studied these in detail, I can share some suggestions on where the best seats are located and also point out those deserving closer attention.

This configuration is expected to go live at the beginning of the Winter 2023 timetable, which in plain English means the end of October this year, although it is possible that converted aircraft make an appearance prior to this.


The configuration
Club World consists of 31 Club Suites, with 17 fitted in the forward cabin (rows 1 to 5) and a further 14 located midship (rows 6 to 9). The seats being the Collins Aerospace Vector suites which are also fitted in the 787-10.

The Club Kitchen is located in the cross aisle between doors 2L and 2L

Aft of Club World is the World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) cabin, which comprises of 37 Recaro PL3510 seats arranged in the familiar 2-3-2 pattern, raked at a pitch of 38". All seats have a 8" recline.

World Traveller (Economy) is arranged across two cabins, with 42 Recaro CL3710 seats in the midship cabin (rows 20 to 25) and 94 seats in the rear cabin (rows 30 to 41). Seats are typically raked in a 3-3-3 configuration at a pitch of 31" but some variations to the pitch do exist which I will highlight later. All seats enjoy a 5" recline

Club World has two toilets (ratio of 1 per 15.5 passengers)
Four toilets are provided for World Traveller Plus and World Traveller passengers (ratio of 1 per 43.25 passengers)

There are two large galleys: one at doors 1L/2L serving the Club World cabin and the other at the rear of the aircraft serving both WT+ and WT. The service pattern routinely starts at the front of each cabin, working rearward


Seats to look out for
Club World
5A: while strategically perfectly located for a speedy exit, has only a partial window next to the IFR screen and will not offer much of a view if any at all.

World Traveller Plus
Thankfully there are are no window blanks so all window seats offer a good view of the majestic sweeping wing.

World Traveller
I have marked in green those seats which may appear to be standard seats but on closer inspection actually offer better than average legroom. These are indicated on the seat map with a green tick symbol. These HJK seats at rows 22 to 24 and 31 to 34 enjoy a 32" pitch.

At the bulkhead, seats 21HJK offer more legroom than 20DEF and 21ABC

The less appealing seats are marked with red crosses. The ABC seats at rows 23, 24, and 25 have less than average legroom. Finally, window seekers may wish to stay clear of seats 37A and 37K


The seat map




Caveat emptor
We are very fortunate to be able to view this seat map ahead of the first aircraft refit, changes to the cabin layouts are possible so we should bear this in mind.

Genius1

Excellent work Prospero! Do we know whether the WT and WTP cabins are receiving the new seats, and whether Thales IFE is being replaced with Panasonic? I'm assuming not.

Prospero

Both will receive the new seats. I don’t know anything yet on the IFE platform

NoTiersForMe

I wonder if it’s worth putting in any update *in this thread* on the rollout of CS on this aircraft at 1 August 2023. I am very much aware that there may be no progress here.

Pilot37

I did provide some sort of update via the Fleet Status thread a few weeks ago. The basics are that, from looking at the timetable for the Winter, no B788 aircraft appear in the new CS format this side of Dec 31st (the initial projections showed 2 refitted aircraft in service by then). After doing some more digging, it appeared BA had pivoted their focus to finishing the B77W fleet refits and the B787 fleet had been pushed into 2024. Obviously a lot of factors (availability of seats etc) come into play which we are not aware of, but as of the beginning of July - the B788 CS roll-out had been pushed into 2024 - and the timeframe of exactly when was still TBC.

Pilot37