STELIA Aerospace is an aircraft seating manufacturer that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Airbus. The company has just unveiled its newest business class product, which offers a flat bed with direct aisle access for airlines on a budget, or airlines that care about the environment, or something like that. It’s an intriguing concept, and I’m curious which airlines end up selecting this seat…
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STELIA Aerospace’s new “basic” business class seat
I’ve written before about STELIA Aerospace’s OPERA product, which is essentially a reverse herringbone seat intended specifically for Airbus narrow body aircraft, including the upcoming Airbus A321XLR.
The company has now introduced a new version of this seat. Here’s how the company describes the inspiration behind this concept:
This pioneering solution sets a new standard for sustainability in aviation while continuously delivering unparalleled comfort and luxury to passengers.
The aeronautics industry stands on the cusp of transformative change, bracing itself for significant challenges in the imminent future as it confronts the imperative of climate change. Embracing this shift and breaking new grounds, STELIA Aerospace presents a revolutionary concept — a sustainable, entirely autonomous seat, responsive to the passenger’s movements.
This new product is designed around four pillars — mass optimization, streamlined electrical components, and incorporation of recycled and recyclable materials, all while upholding the luxurious comfort of a business class seat.
The most revolutionary change here is that the seat includes the removal of the electrical actuator and ECU. So seat movement isn’t controlled by anything electronic, but rather the seat moves based on the passenger’s movement.
With the elimination of most electrical components in the seat, this is one of the lightest weight business class seats out there, which of course helps contribute to reduced maintenance costs, reduced fuel burn, and improved aircraft range. The seat is 30% lighter than the “standard” STELIA OPERA product.
As you’ll see in the below pictures, this product also includes the elimination of fixed, built-in TV screens, and instead boasts portable entertainment.
Below you can see a video that shows the seat’s movements based on passenger inputs.
Which airline would select this seat?
STELIA Aerospace’s new seat is unique, because we haven’t seen many premium fully flat seats that can move, but without a motorized function. Finnair’s business class is known for similarly not having most electrical functions, but what makes it different is that the seat doesn’t recline, but rather you can just raise a legrest to create a bed.
While I understand this is a cost saving initiative, I actually don’t mind the concept of manual recline, assuming it works well. So many electrical seats are quite loud when being adjusted, and that process also sometimes takes way too long. If this can be done efficiently, I’m all for it.
Now, the lack of built-in inflight entertainment as a standard is an interesting direction to take. Up until now, just about all airlines with flat bed and direct aisle access business class have built-in inflight entertainment. The only exception I can think of is ZIPAIR Full Flat, which is a reverse herringbone product without seat back entertainment. However, that’s also not even marketed as business class.
I’m curious what kind of airline STELIA Aerospace is targeting with this. Would full service airlines select this seat, or is this a product that the company hopes some budget carriers with a premium cabin would introduce? What makes this trickier is that it’s intended as a narrow body business class seat, which limits the potential customer base.
Bottom line
STELIA Aerospace has unveiled its newest narrow body business class product, which is the OPERA ESSENTIAL seat. This is based on the standard OPERA product, except it’s much more budget-friendly in terms of weight, maintenance costs, electrical components, etc.
Only time will tell which airline selects this product. Obviously airlines love lower cost options, though how will passengers react to the concept of manual recline?
What do you make of the STELIA Aerospace OPERA ESSENTIAL product?
Mechanical seats are fine if it results in less maintenance delays or out-of-service seats. There could be a market for this but they should include an IFE screen.
I would not mind the manual use of the seat. I do not think I would like the Finnair style that allows you to sit straight or lay down, but nothing in between.
Alaska airlines has business class (actually premium economy marketed as First Class) that doesn't have IFE!
This would, unfortunately, be a cheap upgrade though I much prefer a built-in screen!
I would be skeptical that this would work for all passengers. I don't weigh enough to move some of the manual seats in domestic F and even when I do some of them tend to creep back up. As the mechanisms wear, they start to rely on weight in addition to the mechanical stops. So, this seat sounds like a disaster to me. I mean, if they can make it work for anyone, that's fine. But the seat also looks like it's not comfortable and is lacking storage.
The downgrade in the quality of this business class seat is not going to quiet the baying complaints about so-called "sustainability" of flying in business class. At all. Anyone who thinks it will reduce the criticism from zealots is out of touch with reality.
This is about cutting costs for airlines, nothing more. This is just spinning BS.
Moving the needle on "sustainability" won't come until hydrogen-fueled long distance jets are introduced, and that's decades...
The downgrade in the quality of this business class seat is not going to quiet the baying complaints about so-called "sustainability" of flying in business class. At all. Anyone who thinks it will reduce the criticism from zealots is out of touch with reality.
This is about cutting costs for airlines, nothing more. This is just spinning BS.
Moving the needle on "sustainability" won't come until hydrogen-fueled long distance jets are introduced, and that's decades away from happening (at best).
Commercial, long-distance air service is extremely hard to decarbonize, more so that just about anything else. Weight versus energy density is everything; you can only make planes so light (see recent turbulence issues) and it's not easy to replace the energy density of jetfuel. It's gonna be a long wait for that, and even ripping out all the seats entirely and simply strapping every passenger to the floor won't help much. This product has nothing to do with "sustainability." Inconvenient truths.
Look at the armrest (non-aisle side): fixed in place, and jutting right into the passenger's shoulder when he was hoping to sleep - effectively narrowing the sleeping space by 3" or more. A disastrous design decision, and a complete fail (it's not that hard to find a way to make that armrest fold or shift out of the way).
Designed by some idiot who has never tried to sleep in a business class seat. Stupid....
Look at the armrest (non-aisle side): fixed in place, and jutting right into the passenger's shoulder when he was hoping to sleep - effectively narrowing the sleeping space by 3" or more. A disastrous design decision, and a complete fail (it's not that hard to find a way to make that armrest fold or shift out of the way).
Designed by some idiot who has never tried to sleep in a business class seat. Stupid. It's all about comfort, and I dare say all about SLEEPING comfort. This seat looks like an epic failure.
Honestly, I doubt anyone cares much if their seat is electrically or manually controlled, as long as that can be accomplished without disturbing their sleeping neighbors (remember the AA 777's with seats mounted in groups, so every time anyone moved in their seats even a little, it shakes all the seats in that group?). I wonder how "smooth" this seat's manual sliding will be and how much it will jostle other seats nearby and make clunking noise like a car seat.
India's LCC Indigo comes to mind. They talked about introducing a 'tailor-made business class' starting with the A321neo later this year.
After the Finnair seat wasn't rejected by passengers/market, I'm sorta surprised that airlines haven't flocked to these kind of seats.
As others have said, lighter weight and less opportunity for mechanical failure.
I guess the desire to not appear "cheap?" But even some of the TATL LoCo carriers (who need all the margin they can get) haven't yet gone for anything like this, that I know of.
Airlines should stop serving meat onboard if they actually care about sustainability. Would make more of a difference than removing a few electronic controls.
If they care that much about such trivial nonsense, why fly at all.
And eat lettuce?
Fake meat is laden with all the worst additives you could possibly imagine in your WORST nightmare!
real meat is much healthier than the crap called vegan/vegetarian meat alternative.
Electrical systems are prone to failure - too often we read of business class seat stuck at a certain position. A manual feature will hopefully solve this problem. So this seat has its perks compared to other conventional seats.
It might be ahead of its time, but I think we're gonna see the arrival of 'accessible luxury' with airilnes especially on long routes - people willing to pay more for a lie-flat seat, but doing without all the other premium bells and wistles with standard economy food and amenities. I guess an evolved premium economy if you will that is beyond a just a roomier economy seat. This is perfect for that.
the footprint is the biggest part of the cost of lie-flat seat, not the actual seat
Indeed, so there will be a hefty premium, but still cutting out the very expensive flourishes as well as fast track and lounges does save a lot of costs.
I think airlines with a large share of corporate clients travelling in business will be interested. Currently, the CO2 factor is for most airlines 2.7 and therefore there is quite some pressure by corporate clients to bring that down. Not installing inseat entertainment also goes well with this market segment, because the want their employees to either sleep or work, but not to watch movies.
"therefore there is quite some pressure by corporate clients to bring that down."
By who, from where?
Not even trying to be contradictory, just that I wonder if you're confusing corporate-released lip service to environment issues, with an actual sense of pressure.
My employer for example adds a CO2 levy as part of our CO2 neutrality journey. CO2 is such an incredibly big real for us when booking air travel, especially intercontinentally. On a TATL flight east coast to Europe the levy is 1600 USD on top of the fair price. They do it for some ESG Reporting BS. So for us it would be a big deal! We’re encouraged to fly more expensive PE than cheaper C. Incredible…
This is interesting. I think Play could be a potential customer. But if there is an option to introduce built-in IFE screens, perhaps we might see some airlines adopt this seat.
Perhaps this might be AA's new A321neo Business Class product ;)
I totally agree with you about AA as more than a highly likely chance of getting these seats. I was thinking of AA but you beat me to the punch. AA can now market itself as being an eco-friendly airline since it has already made its decision to remove a lot of its seat-back entertainment (737s and 319s).
Hawaiian has manual movements & no built-in IFE in their A330 J seat as I believe at the time they needed to cut costs to justify the footprint of a full-flat, all-aisle seat, but the 787s have a nicer electronic setup.
Also, is that guy in the video extremely tall, or does the headrest stop around the neckline? If the latter, I can't imagine this seat gets much traction.
The seat adjustments on HA’s A330s are minimal compared to other products, but they’re 100% electric.
Seems like it, and based on the other pictures, it doesn't appear about to be adjusted/raised at all. Odd.
Not only that the seat bottom looks low in the upright position which does not look comfortable to sit in when upright. Walls, seat, and everything looks much lower/closer to the floor than a typical product. I suppose that is where they are getting some of the weight savings. Shorter frame = less material needed.