This is exciting, and long overdue. British Airways has just revealed the details of its new first class suite, which will be introduced starting in 2026.
In this post:
Details of British Airways’ new first class suite
British Airways has plans to introduce a new first class product. Not surprisingly, I’d say the product is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but it still looks like a material improvement over the current seat. Many of us have long called British Airways first class the world’s best business class, and I think this product should change that.
What can we expect from British Airways’ new first class, designed in partnership with Collins Aerospace?
- The first class suites will be in a 1-2-1 configuration, with privacy doors and curved walls that are 60″ high
- The seat is 36.5″ wide, the bed has a length of 79″, so it’s quite spacious
- The center seats are cool, as the divider between seats can fully slide open, so that you can better share the space if you’re traveling with someone; the ottoman can also double as a buddy seat, for face-to-face dining
- The seat features much improved technology, including a 32″ 4K personal television, several charging options (AC, USB-A, USB-C, and wireless charging), and bluetooth audio
- The seat has a lot more storage than before, with several enclosed compartments, plus a private closet at each seat
- The curves throughout the cabin take inspiration from British Airways’ Concorde wings
Here’s how British Airways’ Chief Customer Officer, Calum Laming, describes this product:
“We’re incredibly proud to launch the next era of First that pushes the boundaries of comfort, luxury and modernity, taking into consideration customer preferences and expectations to the finest detail.”
“This coupled with our incredible colleagues delivering a world-class service, following the launch of our First Service Specialists scheme, as well as the many benefits of flying First such as First Wing entry, access to our award-winning lounges including our Concorde Room and priority boarding, means we truly believe we offer a winning combination in delivering an extraordinary experience for our customers.”
Below you can find some renderings of the new first class product.
This isn’t going to be the world’s best first class, but I’m impressed, as it’s an elegant-looking product, and has some thoughtful improvements. For example, I love how the center suites can be turned into a larger space, where you can actually walk easily between them.
It is interesting how British Airways is positioning this. On the one hand, the airline claims it’s “taking luxury to new heights” and calls it a “game changing new first seat,” but then the airline also describes itself as the “only European carrier to offer First class from London to the US.” Indeed, I think we can all agree British Airways has the best first class on nonstop flights between London and the US of any European airline. 😉
Just about all the major European airlines are currently rolling out new first class products. Lufthansa has just launched its new Allegris first class, which will also be installed on SWISS, and will be known as SWISS Senses. Air France is also expected to shortly announce its new La Premiere first class.
When will British Airways’ new first class debut?
British Airways will debut its new first class in mid-2026, on Airbus A380s. Specifically, British Airways plans to reconfigure its A380s as of then, with new cabins across the plane, and that includes a new first class.
My assumption is that when British Airways reconfigures its A380s, we’ll see a bit more logical of a layout. Currently the airline has business class, premium economy, and economy, on the upper deck, and first class, business class, and economy, on the lower deck. That will likely be streamlined a bit, with first class and business class both fully moving upstairs.
British Airways will also presumably introduce its new first class on Boeing 777-9s, once those are delivered, though it’s anyone’s guess when that happens, given delays with the aircraft.
It remains to be seen if British Airways plans to retrofit any other existing planes with these cabins. British Airways has sort of introduced an interim new first class product on some Boeing 777s, which is decent, but not amazing. Let’s see if some existing 777s and 787s will get this new first class… I wouldn’t count on it.
Bottom line
British Airways has just unveiled its new first class product, which looks like a very nice improvement over the existing experience. This is expected to be installed on A380s when they’re retrofitted, plus on newly delivered 777-9s. This product looks solid — while it won’t be the best first class product in the world, it’s a significant improvement over the old one.
We also have to give British Airways credit for often pricing its first class reasonably, so flying with the airline in a premium cabin can represent a decent value.
What do you make of British Airways’ new first class?
Rather than showcasing the best of British values, BA of today is only upholding a motto of accepting mediocrity. What a waste of what was a reputed name in the 80s-2000s.
Not hard to understand why though. They control nearly 40% of the seats into world's largest aviation market, and 60% of the seats into the most valuable hub within that multi-gateway market.
What do they need to excel for? What would that grant them that they don't already have, seeing as increasing those shares is extremely limited (for both themselves and for competitors) by infrastructure.
Maybe if they just had a bit of motivation to change, positivity can return. BA have just taken their customer base for granted just because low cost options are even worse, and BA runs out of Heathrow (and is the largest carrier there, if I'm not wrong).
Oh boy! I can sit in my nice comfy First seat and ponder my choices for “brunch”. Do I want the panini? Or nothing?
Rumours are it’s been ditched and a new menu will be introduced on Friday…fingers crossed!
Few more pictures and videos coming out now, I didn’t realise they had a full mock up seat for the journalists to sit in;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/travel/video-3321175/Video-Mail-gives-BAs-new-A380-class-seat-try.html
It’s telling that they’re planning to debut this on the A380 in mid-2026. I understand they’re behind LH, QR, and EK in the delivery queue, but it sounds to me like they’re pessimistic about Boeing’s revised estimates. Also, some comments saying the planned retrofit will see 110 (!!!) Club Suites? That’s madness.
First is falling from 14 to 8
Current A380 cabin is 14 First class 97 Business class. That makes 111 premium
New (hypothetically) is 8 First 110 Business. That makes 118 premium.
Slight increase.
B777-300ER F cabin went from 14 to 8
Business class went from 56 to 76
It really doesn't take much to impress you, does it?
Well, to Ben's credit, he does say "evolutionary, not revolutionary", which is objectively true. It's just that he says about every first class improvement for any airline since the EY Apartment/Residence.
Fred and his wife have had a terrible time on BA.
We used to have a tremendous time. The Concorde was something special. Then came Willie and Alex and the era of cost cutting. When you see the erosion over time, it is quite saddening.
As I write *this* comment, a niece has been sitting on the tarmac at LHR for nearly an hour waiting for a gate to open up. They've just decided to park at a hard stand and bus the pax. To corroborate my comments, including those about BA's tech issues, the Financial Times had an article last summer on BA's operational woes. The article faults years of cost-cutting.
It's nice to be informed about the new stuff, however, the wording is as usual as with most of the airlines:
"will be", "gradually" , "soon"
and later will follow:
"delayed", "postponed"...
The big questions as on every BA flight...
Will they have cleaned the cabin? and what percentage of the advertised menu will actually be available?
How much does it matter when you can't make a reliable connection on this airline?
BA's operational execution is terrible. 30+ percent of BA's flights are cancelled or late. Often, this cascades. The late departure denies a gate slot to an inbound flight. On about 1-in-3 inbound long-haul flights, we're sitting on the tarmac.
Obviously one has no idea how Fred came to post a figure of “30+% of BA’s flights are cancelled or late”, however, I cannot find a figure anywhere online which exceeds 3% and that was a pandemic analysis.
BA bashing or parrot jabber perhaps?
Name-calling perhaps? This is an av-geek blog. Have you not heard of Cirium? Its monthly on-time performance reports? Have a look. Learn.
The 3% figure to which you refer relates to cancellations. From a Financial Times article this last summer:
"The airline has cancelled 4,033 flights from UK airports over the past year, nearly double that of low-cost rival easyJet, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium. That equated to 2.3 per cent...
Name-calling perhaps? This is an av-geek blog. Have you not heard of Cirium? Its monthly on-time performance reports? Have a look. Learn.
The 3% figure to which you refer relates to cancellations. From a Financial Times article this last summer:
"The airline has cancelled 4,033 flights from UK airports over the past year, nearly double that of low-cost rival easyJet, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium. That equated to 2.3 per cent of its flights from the UK, well above the industry average of 1.4 per cent.
“BA is still suffering from years of cost cutting,” said Chris Tarry, an aviation industry consultant. “In my view BA still has a long way to go, and once you lose a customer it takes a long time to win them back.”
The figures expose how BA’s creaking technology, operational complexity and exposure to London’s Heathrow airport, which operates at full capacity, have combined to leave the airline under pressure as millions of travellers prepare for the summer holidays.
USUK…., everyone knows that prior preparation and planning prevents p*** poor performance.
There is a famous quotation from that great English gentleman, Sir Winston Churchill: “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber”.
My, my Ben, has certainly given the ‘parrots’ something to jabber about in the subject article.
Never known to disappoint, the usual suspects jabber away displaying their phenomenal ignorance and prejudice.
Those who are actually acquainted with such things, know only too well that BA is ranked number 13...
There is a famous quotation from that great English gentleman, Sir Winston Churchill: “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber”.
My, my Ben, has certainly given the ‘parrots’ something to jabber about in the subject article.
Never known to disappoint, the usual suspects jabber away displaying their phenomenal ignorance and prejudice.
Those who are actually acquainted with such things, know only too well that BA is ranked number 13 in the Skytrax 2024 World Rankings.
Just as a matter of interest, the nearest US competitor can only manage 21st place; with the others miles behind.
Jabber on parrots as the eagles are silently laughing at your incessant, pathetic rhetoric.
Let's compare BA to nothing other than itself. There are those of us who remember what BA was and see what it is now. I can't speak for anyone else. But, over the course of over 40 years of flying with BA, my wife and I can safely say BA is a shadow of its former self.
This looks great to me, but does anybody else feel that this seems very similar to JAL’s A350 business class seat…? Perhaps with a little more legroom, but otherwise it seems similar. Kind of shows you the difference in standards I suppose.
My first thought was that it looks like TG's first suites. But there's really only so much you can do in the confined space unless you want to go a single-aisle route like EY.
Has anyone done anything convincing with F on main deck, leveraging the 74cm wider cabin ?
That's about 20 cm more width that can be alloted to each seat in 1-2-1 configuration. Still not enough to squeeze in the Qantas 1st product in 1-2-1 but good enough to be more creative.
Now in fairness if the average BA F passenger prefers the prestige of the upper deck to more square footage... Also A380 upper deck and A350 cabin widths are similar. Is that a coincidence ?
Another "good enough" product from BA that does little but remind us just how captured and undemanding their highest-yield customers are.
Love all the BA haters on here! As US based Oneworld Emeralds, we’ve just transitioned from AA EP to BA GGL and could not be happier. We find the program incredibly generous and our multiple paid BA 1st class trips have been reasonably priced and well above average service wise. AF F is ridiculously priced and unavailable to most as an award, LH is fine as a redemption last minute but also not worth the...
Love all the BA haters on here! As US based Oneworld Emeralds, we’ve just transitioned from AA EP to BA GGL and could not be happier. We find the program incredibly generous and our multiple paid BA 1st class trips have been reasonably priced and well above average service wise. AF F is ridiculously priced and unavailable to most as an award, LH is fine as a redemption last minute but also not worth the $$$. I’ll gladly take BA F simply for the 8 or 14 F cabin and the accompanying FA/PAX ratio at a reasonable price over ANY J cabin on pretty much any carrier ALWAYS! Looking foreward to our next flight on the A380 MIA LHR DUS at Christmas! Cheers!
Let's just hope you don't read too much into alphabet poop like the other pedophile.
Despite a subjective preferencial topic, you should try QR NH JL before making conclusions.
While you are comparing F to J, you would see BA shortcomings even against those J products.
So you are saying the same thing everyone has said for the last 25 years...BA F is a great business class product.
PCT, just try to find first class award inventory. You mention Miami. Over the next 12 months, for two persons, there is NO first class award inventory from Miami to London. There is one date from London to Miami and that's Christmas Eve. If you are GGL, you can force open award seats out of revenue inventory. Others can't. Which is your criticism of Air France first.
It's pretty good, once the rollout is complete BA's hard product will be pretty competitive on all fronts. For BA standards it is definitely revolutionary, although not by industry standards. From what I hear their soft product is still a mess and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future
Willie Walsh & Alex Cruz didn't view long-tenured crew as the keepers of BA's high-touch passenger experience . . . who would train the next generation. They were an expense to cut. Now, we have what we have. Yesterday, on a medium-haul flight, I was offered a beverage with my meal and that was it. Seemingly, the crew couldn't be disturbed from their socializing in the galley.
Are the FA's the same though? Lipstick on a PIG!
For the A380, it's lipstick inside of a pig. Fat, waddling fuel hog that uses mind control gas to convince the avblogosphere that it's good.
Most spacious commercial airliner in the skies that has extra soundproofing material, lower cabin altitude, and a remarkably smooth flight is a bad airplane for a passenger? Why do you as a passenger care about an aircrafts fuel burn so much? Feel free to go out of your way to sit 3-3-3 in a 787 if that's your top priority
Don’t travel at all if you’re that worried about emissions. Nothing beats the spaciousness of the a380 for me as a passenger and when flying emirates you get a whole bar onboard to enjoy what other aircraft facilitates that!
To be fair, the A380 and A350 are far more stable in turbulent Air than the B777. Can't tell you about the B787.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, the problem is that BA isn't releasing first class award inventory the way that it used to. The industry trend is dynamic award pricing -- BA would stand to make money with dynamic award pricing. The industry creates incentives for spending in all revenue channels (and not just flying) via their respective flavors of tier points.
Here in London, friends uniformly say that BA's service level has continuously declined for the past 10 years or so. I've seen it. The traditional high-touch service level is gone. It's sad. So, as someone else has commented, even if the cabin interiors are upgraded, BA's service level is still broken.
Agreed. Hard to believe that they have fallen from their heights as the World's Favourite Airline in the 1980s-2000s.
The 2nd rendering sure seems to show lower deck A380 windows and sidewalls, so maybe they’ll keep F in the basement after all.
Service, food, cleanliness and toilets are below any standards. And I do believe it will not change any time soon. BA is beyond any repair.
Now that BA has moved to the AA terminal at JFK which I believe can handle A380s (unlike the old BA terminal), do you think we’ll see the reconfigured A380 on the LHR-JFK route?
I don't think Terminal 8 can handle the A380. Only One and Four. Even if it did, unlikely as they prefer frequency with multiple flights a day. And passengers are willing to pay a pretty penny for that.
Looks great! Well done, BA! I look forward to trying it.
First class award inventory has become difficult. But, they still accept credit cards.
The problem with doors on BA is there's no overhead air vents and the cabin gets too stuffy. I was on Club Suites JFK-LHR and it was too hot. Flying back in F LHR-ATL and the open cabin made it much more comfortable.
Why didn’t you open a window?
Easy solution. Just get a handheld electric fan (plenty of options on Amazon) that uses a C-plug charger. Most of them have a kickstand that holds them erect on your seat's counter or table, and they're surprisingly powerful.
Best travel aid I've ever bought. Works beautifully on the B.A.s, Air Frances, etc who don't have overhead vents.
It looks quite nice, has Q suite vibes with more room, Collins aerospace RTX are the company behind this seat, look forward to the roll out.
Just noticed what looks like a mini bar in the rendering of the middle seats but not mentioned as a feature in the press release.
4 seats a row on the upper deck of 380s sounds not so spacious...
That would be the same as EK and QR. Its fine.
If this was introduced as a business class a half decade ago, we could really be impressed.
It's not bad, but it continues to scream "We dominate the world's largest aviation market, and thus don't feel compelled to offer anything more than the bare minimum."
LHR is a very significant global hub, but it not even close to being "the world's largest aviation market."
UK-US transatlantic and back is the most profitable international route. BA has monopoly on Heathrow slots. It makes over a billion dollars revenue a year just on the LHR-JFK route.
"BA has monopoly on Heathrow slots."
BA does not, by any stretch of the word nor imagination, have a monopoly on Heathrow slots.
It owns over half the slots at Heathrow. The next highest is Virgin who owns less than 8% of what BA does. So yes it does have an effective monopoly over LHR. No one can compete with BA’s scheduling.
"LHR is a very significant global hub, but it not even close to being "the world's largest aviation market.""
That's why no one said "LHR" but you.
I was referring to Metro London, which is far and away the world's largest aviation market, with a significant distance between runner-up Greater New York City, and a massive distance between third placed Metropolitan Tokyo.
BA A380 configuration is actually kind of nice, at least for business class passengers. You see, when airlines put many business class seats on the upper deck of A380, those...
BA A380 configuration is actually kind of nice, at least for business class passengers. You see, when airlines put many business class seats on the upper deck of A380, those seating at the back (behind or close to the second door), there're very high chance that you'll end up de-planing even later than some economy class passengers. This wouldn't be ideal, especially while landing in the US where immigration might be... we know how it goes.
BA tried to prevent that from happening, by (somewhat) evenly placing business class seats on both decks, so that they'll be ensured to de-plane before economy class passengers.
But still, it's on the inefficient side, I assume.
Also, the new suites look nice, especially the centre suites where you can actually move between two. We've seen a lot of double bed suites, but essentially none of them had that feature.
Can see Ben/other parents being a huge fan of that center seat set-up. Makes it so much easier to deal with a young child, having that access between seats.
@Ben, do you think BA will shrink its F cabin to 8 seats across its whole F-equipped fleet?
Another travel writer is at the launch event and is live blogging updates ;
“It will be either a 12 or 14 seat cabin. The full layout, we believe, is 12 or 14 x First, 110 x Club Suite, 84 x World Traveller Plus and 215 x World Traveller.”
110 business class seats on any airplane is an insanely huge premium cabin. I know it’s BA which might be the most premium heavy airline out there but jeez
Not sure how BA can squeeze that many seats. If it was the old CW seats, I could imagine it possible.
The new suites with more seats?
BA must be reclaiming space from somewhere.
You could just about get 110 J on the entire upper deck with a reduced galley footprint, F would remain on the lower deck.
This is nice.... is it worth dealing with BA's operational issues though? Not so sure.
Operational issues and service quality issues.
You say its evolutionary rather than revolutionary. What constitutes revolutionary? Theres only so much an airline can do in first class. I say this as a medium key BA hater too
Look at the structure of the actual seat. Not the suite as a whole. Just the seat. The cushions. It very much looks like a nice business class seat. It looks nothing like a first class seat that one would find on Air France, Lufthansa, etc. Let alone Emirates. Thus "evolutionary" and not "revolutionary."
Air France uses a very similar cushion to this in first at present, let’s see what their new first is like. I think Lucky’s point is more this isn’t competing with the likes of the Etihad first class apartments and that calibre of product where you have a seat, bed, room to yourself basically.
I evolve, but I don’t re-volve
The 'Speedmark' logo everywhere seems over the top.
It’s a lovely logo though!
I assume with that the service on the ground and the cleanliness of their lounges will improve dramatically...NOT.
The seats are not the issue. The restrooms are in bad shape on the 350s and the on time performance is horrific.
BA's operational execution is poor. Its cancel/late rate is over 30 percent. In America, your ULCCs have cancel/late rates in that range. Your legacy carriers are typically in the 10 to 20 percent range. In an effort to remedy this, on short-haul flights over the past several months, BA has been boarding zones 1, 2, and 3 concurrently. Tier status be damned.
The Etihad 787 called.
They want their suite back.