SWISS A330 Retrofit Project: New First & Business Class, 1.5-Ton Weight

This will be awesome, way better than any First Class on those lousy airlines. Team LHG!

Really adding a 1.5 ton weight at the back.

The 1.5 ton weight thing is WILD. They've decided that moving the first class suites toward the center of the plane would upset their upper class passengers so they're carrying 1.5 extra tons on EVERY SECTOR THIS PLANE WILL EVER FLY.

If you superimpose screenshots of Aerolopa's seat maps you realise the seats have the exact same width. The A350 is more tapered than the 330 so where the F seats are the difference is small and it's the aisle width that suffers along with some window side console.

In Business class the difference in cabin width is compensated by reduced aisle width and higher seat pitch. Seats don't appear materially narrower.

I would not be surprised they tried as much as possible to maximize seat commonality across aircraft types to optimize both capex and opex.

As focused on CO2 emmisions as Europe is, I'm surprised that the airline wasn't pressured by their gov't nor public opinion to move upper class rearwards in lieu of adding the dead weight.

21 seats in Premium Economy, not 28. Three rows of 7 abreast.

That's European Union, of which Switzerland is neither part nor do they have a vote to abolish CO2 emissions at this stage. They may or may not decide some decades later to follow or not to follow the environmental standard.

(Side note: They have a slightly slower and more conservative political system, e.g. Swiss Women suffrage was finally achieved in 1990's - around 30 years later after Iranian women and the majority of African women)

Great news. I have always felt paying for business on a daytime Europe-US flight was a waste of points. Can’t wait for PE to be an option.

I don't believe first class weight is the only reason for the counter weight.

1.5t for 3 seats is about 500kg per seat or (450kg for single seats and 600kg for center double suite).
That weight is impossible even for first class cabins (unless heading in the direction of Singapore and Etihad A380s).

So I'm guessing that either the galley gained weight or business class cabins weight increased significantly from the more compact Thompson vantage (which sounds more plausible). Those Thompson vantage seats might be weighing below 80kg per seat but the new design looks heavier and could be coming up to 100kg per seat.

I don't believe first class weight is the only reason for the counter weight.

1.5t for 3 seats is about 500kg per seat or (450kg for single seats and 600kg for center double suite).
That weight is impossible even for first class cabins (unless heading in the direction of Singapore and Etihad A380s).

So I'm guessing that either the galley gained weight or business class cabins weight increased significantly from the more compact Thompson vantage (which sounds more plausible). Those Thompson vantage seats might be weighing below 80kg per seat but the new design looks heavier and could be coming up to 100kg per seat.

Again, adding a counter weight on airplanes (most especially widebodies) isn't all that uncommon. You will be surprised how many airlines and the different aircrafts that require such. Most high premium B777-300ER tend to have it. A handful of B747 have counter weight.
Swiss just decided to publicize this one due to the infighting between them and the Lufthansa group, probably a way to publicly show their displeasure about the whole alegris program.

This is an anticipated, and welcome development. The LX A330-300 is subpar in all but the First Class cabin. The Business Class product debuted along with the plane, in 2009. It is outdated, not comfortable, and not premium, with the exception of a few more recent enhancements, notably to the food and the food presentation. (I fly ZRH-NYC and back a lot). That said, LX does a meticulous job of maintaining these frames. They always look crisp, clean, and tidy. The Economy section needs better seats and a much improved entertainment system.

Sweet thought, but that's because aerolopa doesn't have the exact seat dimensions for the A330 seats yet so they just reused PNGs from the A350/LH 787 seatmaps they already had.

Do you know that for a fact or are you assuming ?

Some years ago, ANA sold old first class seats, without the IFE equipment and screens mounted. There was a warning about the weight of the seats, which was in the ball park of 400-500 kg per seat. Can't remember the exact number. So yeah F seats are heavy.

The challenge here is that the new configuration should be 1.5t more nose heavy than the aircraft designers had expected, or more than the current configuration is to necessitate the tail weight. And that is a bit fascinating.

Agreed. This is good. JFK-ZRH/GVA can be a nice point redemption in J, at times (like, I’ve found 60-80K, one-way, via Aeroplan), but the cabin is due for an update.

Is it just the pace of A330 retrofits and A350 deliveries that determine when Swiss’s final A340 flight will be or will the A340 retirement also depend on how fast Swiss will retrofit 777s?

It was 1971 not 1990.