China Southern is China’s largest airline. Currently their long haul fleet consists of A330s, A380s, 777s, and 787s. Given that many of these planes are new, China Southern has a rather underwhelming business class product.
Their A380s, 777s, and select A330s and select 787s, have fully flat staggered seats in a 1-2-1 configuration.
China Southern’s A380 business class
Meanwhile select 787s and select A330s just have forward facing fully flat seats in a 2-2-2 configuration, which isn’t exactly great.
China Southern will soon be taking delivery of their first Airbus A350-900. They have 20 of these planes on order, which they expect to take delivery of between 2019 and 2022.
China Southern A350-900
In addition to the A350 as such being a pleasure to fly, China Southern will be introducing a new business class seat on the A350-900, which should represent a nice upgrade for passengers.
China Southern’s A350-900s will feature a total of 314 seats, including 28 business class seats, 24 premium economy seats, and 262 economy seats.
China Southern has selected Recaro’s CL6710 seat for their A350 business class. For those of you not familiar, these are the same seats that EL AL has on their 787s, and also what TAP Air Portugal has one their A330-900neos.
EL AL’s 787 business class
EL AL’s 787 business class
While not identical, these seats are also quite similar to the Zodiac Optima seats, which you’ll find in United Polaris as well as on Air France’s upcoming A350-900s.
United’s 777 business class
While I’d say this is a good seat in general, I find China Southern’s cabin finishes to be rather hideous. The blue just doesn’t match the faux-wood, in my opinion — it’s almost like they were going with two different concepts and just decided to merge the two.
As of now China Southern doesn’t have plans to install these seats on any existing planes, so you can expect that for now these will be exclusive to the A350.
China Southern’s plan is to initially fly the A350 between Beijing and Guangzhou (a route on which they use a lot of their long haul aircraft, including the A380), and then eventually the plane will be used for long haul routes.
What do you make of China Southern’s new A350 business class?
I literally just got off an A350 SIN to BNE and it’s a great aircraft. Prior to that it was the A380 LHR to SIN equally effortless- even for 14 hrs in economy lol.
@DCS, considering Americans are alone in pronouncing 'Z' as 'Zee', you should just know that when you are outside of USA, 'Z' is pronounced 'Zed'. This is not some Chinese quirk. This is just the English language.
No Westerner should be flying Chinese airlines. The nation is an authoritarian dystopia.
While El Al’s looks very nice, this is just plain Ugly, what were they thinking?
I agree the color scheme is pretty awful. My first thought was that it looked like a dentist office.
I agree about the cabin finishes. Are those seats pleather? The faux wood grain decals are just awful.
Lucky, China Railway,China Southern all have bad design in terms of interior and exterior they both need some graduates from central art institute in China to fix it, which is not going to happen per Chinese standards
CZ is keeping 9-abreast 777 so kudos for them.
'CZ' -- pronounced as 'See-Zed' by public announcers in China, so beware and pay attention or you'll miss your flight because you did not catch a gate change on the PA! :-)
where can I search CZ award to book on AA?
@keitherson
CZ is in process of removing F cabin on their 77W and their newly delivered 77W does not have F cabin either. So in the future only their A388s will have a real F cabin and all other aircraft in CZ's fleet will have J/W/Y only.
Any mention of an F cabin, Lucky? All their other widebody aircraft have an F cabin.
You didn’t mention this, but CZ have staggered seats on their 787-9 while their 787-8 have forward facing seats. Their 787-9 staggered seats are more like what’s on Qantas and Eva’s 787 (Vantage XL) than their own A380/777 staggered seats.