In November 2023, Emirates Airline announced that it’s partnering with Safran on new seats for much of its fleet. For many of us, the biggest question here is what we should expect from Emirates’ new business class. We now have some more clues…
Continue reading: Emirates’ New Safran Business Class Seats: What To Expect?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
And just to add, they've also selected Thales as their IFE vendor along with their 777Xs with 4K QLED (not OLED) screens.
Wait, Since the seat model for Emirates A380 Premium Economy is Recaro, that would mean that they would switch suppliers to Safran. So that means we will probably get a slightly different product!
Well it'll certainly be much better than their godforsaken 2-3-2s.
Quite frankly EK has been behind the curve with their business class compared to most airlines.
How does Emirates get away with 7 across angled (!) business class, while Lufthansa’s 2-2-2 fully flat are so hated?
Probably because roughly the other half of their fleet (A380s) has 1-2-1 flat bed business class.
The Safran Optima (Polaris and AF's less premium/higher-density A350s and 777s) would also seem plausible from that layout (AF squeezes 2 more seats into the A359 than EK will), especially if EK is thinking about it for less premium and more frequent routes. Still a huge upgrade from 777 2-3-2 angle flat.
7 across or 2-2-2 are not necessarily bad, I would argue some of the best business class seats are 7 across/2-2-2 e.g. JL KE WY
I think the Fusio isn't entirely out of the question although it will likely be the Unity. Fusio cabin density isn't any worse than other staggered configs. I compared seatmaps of EY's 77Ws and they have the same number of seats by density as NH.
Let's see what the end result is. Knowing emirates it will be a cheaper seat with added bling.
Ben - if they were going Fusio, don't you imagine the seat map would illustrate the rear-facing seats? The odds you provided may have in fact been a bit high...
The 2-2-2 product used by JL/KE/WY (and also GF) is the Apex Suite which literally couldn’t be more different from 2-2-2 on for example Lufthansa or KLM, let alone 2-3-2 on Emirates. Apex Suites are essentially a staggered 1-2-1 with direct aisle access from every seat and crazy amounts of privacy. In my opinion it’s the best business class hard product in the world, significantly superior even to Qsuites or what ANA has…so yeah definitely not what people usually have in mind when they talk about 2-2-2 being an inferior product!
i have seen the new seats. the overall frame/structure bears resemblance with the current refurbished J class seats onboard A380. Just add doors, more muted color palette, bigger TV screen, and the virtual windows for the center seats (a la F class game changer).