Breeze Airways Unveils Premium-Heavy Airbus A220 Interiors

A "nice" class without a 69 joke isn't very nice at all, if you ask me.

Depends on appetite in US for paying a slight premium over a LCC like Spirit, Southwest or Frontier. The US market previously took shift to grab lowest price and was okay to pay for each inclusion, but as of late with Airlines (and hotels) pushing these limits, there does appear to be a shift of spend away from these providers to more niche providers offering premium and more inclusive comforts which people are willing to pay for it.

Nicest up front is really really nice but the 30" pitch in the rear of the plane strikes me as "not nice".
BTW I wonder whether those seats will recline?

This looks like a great idea. I'll pay a little more not to sit with the chickens and goats.

The premium market has become less corporate and more individual purchase so it's ripe for an experiment like this. Hopefully it doesn't run into the Midwest Express effect.

So they splurge on the seats, but skimp on the staff.

Oddly, this configuration harkens back to some of the regulated-era seat maps. Delta's DC9s were 28F 40Y in the early 70s.

Yes they will. The question is just if you can select the recline on your own, or if there will be recline because the superslimline-seats will bend when an average American (grossly overweight by international health standards) leans against them.

I think you meant 34” for the exit row… not 49” pitch.

Pre-reclined.

This plane is finally getting it's revenge. Boeing, you tried your hardest to kill it. Now look at where you are.

given the delivery timeline, this was a cheap way to get good publicity. There is a fair chance that there are significant alterations by the time the A220's finally arrive.
Perhaps hoping for a halo effect to mask the not 'nice' seats down the back

FYI...the initial details about power in the release were incorrect. The original story at https://paxex.aero/breeze-a220-premium-seat-layout/ is updated now.

Hi Ben,

Minor correction:

The seating plan chart featured in the post appears to be upside-down.

This will be an interesting development; my fear is that consumers will not be able to justify the extra cost on what are relatively short routes -- especially since most leisure travelers prioritize low cost over many other factors and tend to book the cheapest fares. With that being said, though, the pandemic may have increased the perceived value of extra personal space, so they may be willing to splurge if the cost difference is marginal enough.

I think a good thing to point out is that the they’re only giving up a few seats since since the plane normally has five seats per row and they’re going down to four. I wonder if by reducing the leg room in the back of the plane and by decreasing the seat count in the front they’re basically gonna break even and this is just a way to convince people to spend maybe a little bit more money for a slightly wider seat

Remember, you are not just losing one seat per row. You are actually losing 1 seat per row, plus 9 inches of pitch (39" vs 30" per row), or just under 1/3 of an entire row of 5 coach seats for every single row converted to first class. That is 1.6 seat equivalent per installed first-class row lost in pitch plus 1 actual seat missing= 2.6 missing seats, or roughly 2.5 coach seats per row of first-class to make it easy to calculate. Additionally, you are losing the revenue of checked bags for people in coach who will now get checked bags for free. (Let's say 2 of of 5 people in a row check a bag), so about $70 bucks total each way. If a round trip ticket is $250 before tax, the airline loses $250 x 2.5 lost seats plus $70x2 (2 bag fees each way), That's $765 lost on one round trip flight for converting one row from five coach seats to 4 first class seats. Divide that by 4 first-class seats, and your price-conscious passengers will need to spend $765/4 seats=$191 more each for the round trip for the airline to make the same amount of money as just selling one row of 5 coach seats.

It might be 49. Look at the picture. There is a window exit there.

As passengers have gotten more voluminous, cars are getting bigger - but airline seats are not. The space in "Premium Economy" resemble standard coach in the 1960s. It's time, if not to impose minimum space requirements in the interest of physical and mental health, at least in a realistic application of the 90 second evacuation rule. It is a farce of regulations that airlines cram seat in and use test subjects who are generally fit, non-obese (which is the exception among today's passengers), and have them practice evacuation under ideal conditions over and over until the magic 90s is reached. In reality, it would take much more than 90s to completely evacuate most planes since passengers are not "trained", and most Americans are overweight, while about 30% are clinically obese.

OTOH, i would be far more likely to fly transcontinental with them at all if they had space up front. So that $441 for my seat replaces $0 as I'd not have flown at all in a narrow seat.
So for your maths to work they need to balance the supply and demand, as not everyone is flexible