AI Business Class Seats
 

Everyone knows that Air India's business class seats are outdated and miles behind some other seats out there. Now that Vistara is receiving new 787s with Stelia Aerospace Symphony seats, is there any chance for AI to update their own cabin? Even if they updated their cabin with Super Diamond seats, used by a lot of airlines right now, it would be a great upgrade from the current cabin.

Carrying on comparing with Vistara, what are the odds of a premium economy cabin added?

They did issue some tenders but that was only to fix the seats not really update the cabin. AI is run like a typical govt. organization so it doesn't matter if there is competition with UK or earlier with 9W & IT etc. They're not going to improve things at all.

There might be some insane group that buys AI in the next few years and upgrades the cabin but AI as a govt. undertaking by themselves won't.

PE cabin may or may not be a good idea in India... time will tell... but irrespective of that there's a zero chance of AI getting a real PE cabin either.

AI simply doesn't have the cash to do any kind of interior cabin work right now. Some time ago they were considering to refurb the remaining B77L to bring them in line with the B77W, but I think that was quietly shelved last year and the tender just asked for new seat covers for existing seats: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/indi...l#post31340208

Also note that fitting new seats is a big deal and requires extensive work, a cabin refurb for a widebody starts at 5 million $ and requires 2-6 weeks downtime for the aircraft depending on what you plan to do. So a significant part of your fleet is offline, which adds to cost.

Because if they had cash that's what what they would spend it on... making the airline better??

Sure, thats the first thought... after which the attention switches to the upcoming pay scale revision... ;)

even if ai had the cash to make cabin improvements, i don't see them doing that as long as it's a government run airline....they simply have no reason to make the customer's travel experience any better....

I guess, with the maintenance standards of AI + months of opportunity that mildew has to cast its magic on AI seats, we may end up with a new level of bad seats on AI after covid ends.