When it comes to global aviation, I don’t think there’s a region in the world with worse seats than what you’ll generally find on intra-Europe flights. While a few airlines use their cabins as a point of differentiation on short haul flights, for the most part there’s very little difference between EasyJet and airlines like British Airways and Lufthansa.
Lufthansa A320 cabin
On that note, Lufthansa recently took delivery of their first A321neo. The airline already has some A320neos in their fleet, but this is their first A321neo.
What makes this plane interesting from a passenger experience standpoint is that it’s the first one to feature a new type of seat. The way they describe these seats, you’d think we were talking about British Airways’ all business class A318, and not a 215 seat A321.
British Airways’ Club World London City A318
As Lufthansa describes the cabins, these “new, innovative seats make traveling even more comfortable.” Even more comfortable? Have they flown one of their intra-Europe planes? They describe this as offering a “completely new flight experience.”
Lufthansa’s new A321neo seat
Are they just talking out of their rears, or is there any merit to these seats?
Lufthansa’s new seats from Geven
Lufthansa’s new seats are manufactured by Geven, an Italian company. Specifically, Lufthansa has chosen the Essenza model (below are some pictures from the manufacturer).
Geven Essenza seats
Geven Essenza seats
There are benefits to these seats for airlines — the seats are extremely lightweight and efficiently use space.
But what about the passenger experience? As Lufthansa describes the new seats:
The comfortable full-structure upholstery of the seat and the backrest ensure a noticeably pleasant sitting experience thanks to ergonomic pressure distribution. Thanks to the innovative slimming of the backrest, guests enjoy even more personal space. This is achieved by the newly developed horizontal arrangement of the literature bag above the table.
I’m not sure I’d call “slimming of the backrest” to be terribly innovative. It’s an “innovation” that has been making the economy flying experience increasingly more miserable over the past several years.
It’s also worth noting that rather than offering a standard 12 degrees of recline, these seats will constantly offer 20 degrees of recline. It sounds like economy won’t have the option to recline further, while business class passengers will be able to adjust their seatbacks to achieve 26 degrees of recline.
Each row of seats will also have USB ports, and tray tables will also have special tablet holders.
It’s long overdue for Lufthansa to finally install power on their planes, so I’m happy to see USB ports. However, I wish we’d see 110v outlets as well, since in some cases these planes will operate flights that are several hours long.
As Lufthansa’s Head of Product Management for Cabins describes the new seats:
“Many customer feedbacks have been incorporated into the design of the seat. We received a lot of positive feedback on the new features. We are therefore convinced that the new seat and the modern ambience of the cabin will further improve the travel comfort of our guests.”
Lufthansa is aligning cabins across airlines
Lufthansa Group includes Lufthansa, Swiss, and Austrian, and largely those airlines have had similar cabins on their narrow body planes, but they haven’t been identical.
The A321neo is joining Swiss’ fleet soon
That’s changing. The introduction of the A321neo signifies the first time that a harmonized cabin is being offered across all three brands. The only difference will be the seat covers and headrest covers, so that they maintain some of their own identity.
This concept will be applied to all A320 family aircraft going forward.
Lufthansa Group says that this will give them the flexibility to react more quickly to current developments and to move aircraft and capacity more easily and efficiently between airlines and hubs.
Bottom line
Lufthansa is making their new A321neo seats sound like they’re something special, though to me it sure sounds like business as usual as far as intra-Europe cabins go. I’d love to be wrong and for these seats to be better, but I’m skeptical.
I’m at least happy to see Lufthansa be adding power ports to planes at least — too bad they’re just USB outlets.
Lufthansa Group still seems very far behind in terms of intra-Europe service from full service airlines. Those new seats look like something I’d find on Spirit or Frontier. Pretty much an overpriced Easyjet or Wizz Air. And where’s the tablet holder they’re talking about? I’d like to know what it looks like, but none of these photos show it.
Lufthansa and group is using the A321 for many flights in the 4-5 hour range (meaning 5-6 hours seated) - TLV, KEF, BEY, CAI, AMM. BA have a small sub fleet of A321 with lie flat beds for these routes in business class. The slimline seat might work for short flights but it doesn’t seem like an appropriate product for longer business class flights.
British Airways A318 All Business Class is the best. Lufthansa seats are just standard economy seating.
If these are as tightly spaced as BA’s neo seating they will be just as horrible. On the BA seats, knees collide with a new storage net I don’t see on LH’s. Even on short haul, seat pitch is king. More = happy bunnies, not less.
I hope Austrian doesn't stop using Do&Co as caterers for the sake of streamlining between LH Group airlines.
@Nic ......or a European train !
Seriously...who needs to recline on a 2 hour flight??
You see? Now LH with this super exciting seat will become the first 6-star on Skytrax :-)
Personally the lack of recline is a great thing on a narrowbody operating relatively short flights. Actual power sockets instead of just USB, plus taller seat backs as Max says, would both be great but I guess that’s not something they’re willing to pay for. It would be a lot better though if the tablet holders were at (approximately) eye level, attached to the literature pocket above where the table is stored kind of like...
Personally the lack of recline is a great thing on a narrowbody operating relatively short flights. Actual power sockets instead of just USB, plus taller seat backs as Max says, would both be great but I guess that’s not something they’re willing to pay for. It would be a lot better though if the tablet holders were at (approximately) eye level, attached to the literature pocket above where the table is stored kind of like Recaro does it, instead of in the table. I want to be able to look straight ahead like I would if using a built-in IFE screen instead of bending my neck down for like three hours...
Overall though, unless you have particularly long legs or are very sensitive to lack of padding, slimline seats aren’t that bad. Some of the most comfortable (short/medium haul) economy experiences I’ve had have been in SWISS, Aeroflot, and easyjet, all in slimline seats...
they look like seats you find on a bus coach
LH should take a look at their customers. Central Europeans are tall, therefore they should increase the height of the seat backs by 5-10 cm.
'We received a lot of positive feedback on the new features'.... who on earth would give a lot of positive comments about these awful seats?¬ They may be less awful than the currents seat, but that's not saying much.
Do LH really think we believe such marketing nonsense? Oh wait, they are a 5 star airline so the new seats must be class leading...
Amazing!
Lufthansa deserves to be the world’s first Skytrax 6* airline!!
Based on the size of seats now, I think no recline is preferred. And obviously all of these changes are done to lower weight and increase seating on planes, not for customers' comfort.
Just give me decent leg room (maybe 34" or possibly 32"), no reclining of the seat in front of me and a bit of back support and I'm good for anything but a long flight.
They do look to have slightly more padding than the dreaded NEK seats.
USB would be fine if we were talking about high power usb-c ports. I could power my laptop, phone or anything else. Unfortunately we’re most likely talking about low power usb-a ports