Business and first class remain the linchpin of most full service airlines’ revenues, and 2024 looks set to offer a fascinating mixture of new premium cabins, launch customers, and delayed products, providing important clues as to how key manufacturers, bellwether airlines and a creaking supply chain are coping with the context in which aviation finds itself. 

Let’s delve into some of the most noteworthy — and likely informative — new seats at the front of the aircraft coming this year.

The longest-awaited seats of 2024 are certainly Lufthansa’s Allegris cabins, both Allegris business and Allegris first — and their Swiss Senses versions too. There are, however, production delays, as well as snags around installation of both products aboard the Boeing 747-8.

Lufthansa told your author at the launch in Berlin that it was planning a 1-2-1 layout for the main deck of the 747-8. But the carrier is reportedly eyeing a hybrid business class approach whereby the upper deck might keep the outdated 2000s-era Collins Diamond flatbed, at least for a while. It remains to be seen if Lufthansa will press forward with installing first class in the nose, which brings its own challenges. What we do know is that Lufthansa Technik has taken the reins on developing the first class product for the 747-8s.

There are also some thorny questions around how the extreme unbundling of the business class cabin will be executed. However, Lufthansa’s move to segment the cabin, and give customers the option to pay extra for certain suite features, is bang on trend.

Cathay Pacific’s eagerly awaited Aria business class suite will be installed on its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. Big questions include who is manufacturing the seat, especially whether it’s the launch for JPA Design’s composite monocoque AirTek, a product we’ve been observing as it moved from concept to proposal over the last couple of years. 

Japan Airlines’ new Safran Unity seats start operating flights aboard its first Airbus A350-1000 this month, and while they were superlative on the ground at the aircraft delivery event, the ongoing spectre of supply chain delays continues to loom. 

Here, it will be instructive to observe how the delivery of JAL’s forthcoming aircraft proceeds, together with the perceived quality of the first and business class seat production after the head of version — and indeed how it stands up to passenger usage.

Also much-awaited is the Air India implementation of Unity aboard its Boeing 777-300ERs, which will follow the initial set of Airbus A350s initially ordered by Aeroflot and which feature Collins Aerospace’s Horizon platform.

Given that Air India’s seat maintenance reputation, before Tata’s acquisition, was substantially below the global standard, these new Unity seats will likely be even more informative about Safran’s production capacity, its quality, and how it holds up under regular use. 

Meanwhile, journalists will soon be exposed to Air India’s first A350 passenger experience. The twinjets have been gently upgraded to better reflect the carrier’s new brand identity.

Emirates, meanwhile, promises a new business class seat from Safran for its A350s. These will potentially also flow across to its Boeing 777s, which presently operate an incredibly outdated mix of angled lie-flat sleeper seats and flatbeds without direct aisle access for every passenger.

It will be notable to see which Safran seat Emirates picks, and how it styles it: the Fusio seen on ANA? The Visa for Air New Zealand (on which more shortly)? Unity again? Or a new implementation of Skylounge, installed on the airline’s A380s, with the low-part-count version Skylounge Core impressing aboard Starlux and Condor.

Emirates’ stablemate flydubai was supposed to be the launch customer for the new Safran Vue herringbone business suite on longer-haul Boeing 737 MAX routes in the last quarter of 2023, and it will be instructive to see whether these delays have been related to the MAX, the cabins, or something else.

Vue’s reception, both in terms of production quality and around the big question of that large chunk of cushion taken out for outward-facing herringbone narrowbody density, will also be one to watch.

Air New Zealand is supposed to start rolling out its new 787-9 cabins from September, including launching Safran’s Visa seats as Business Premier and Business Premier Luxe — and the much-anticipated Economy Skynest with its hundred-dollar-an-hour nap pods.

This will be another set of data points for Safran, but also for how the market reacts to the Skynest. 

Also delayed from the initial plans of “Winter 2023-24” to “Winter 2024” is the new Air France La Première first class. The last time we saw any kind of renderings were pencil sketches at an investor event in mid-2022, when the trio of seat-daybed-armchair elements were presented. The specifics are hazy given that the translation of “chaise longue” from French into English and back again is very complicated, so it will be fascinating to see how it all turns out.

Related Articles:

• Recaro’s Dr. Mark Hiller on how aircraft seats are evolving
• JAL A350 interiors supply chain issues raise spectre of delays in 2024
• Classic aisle seats will be baseline business on Lufthansa Allegris
• Air India weaves new branding palette into A350-900 interiors
• Recaro Aircraft Seating CEO flags continued shortage in IFE parts
• Lufthansa turns to Lufthansa Technik for 747-8 first class suites
• Stelia takes focussed approach to perceived seat quality

Featured image credited to John Walton