Korean Air goes deep brown with staggered business Prestige Suites 2.0Runway Girl

Korean Air’s new Prestige Suites 2.0 business class product has emerged, and will début on 25 July aboard the airline’s new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner, between Seoul Incheon and Tokyo Narita.

The new product — name and maker unconfirmed, on which more later — succeeds the Collins Apex forward-facing stagger that Korean calls Prestige Suites.

What we know about the seat so far is limited to a single 787-10 product page on the Korean Air website and a carefully worded press release. It’s a forward-facing staggered doored mini-suite with high walls that looks remarkably spacious even on the relatively narrow 787 frame.

Statistics time: it’s a long bed — 78.2 to 79.2 inches, over 6’6” (or about 200cm) with a staggered seat pitch of 46 inches. The seat itself measures 21” wide, presumably at the widest section towards the front of the pan. The dividers are tall: 52” or 1.32m, higher than many of the earlier suite products and likely to provide a substantial amount of privacy.

The seats are arranged in the “honeymoon/divorce” arrangement in the centre section, where two middle seats are right next to each other, and with a divider that retracts below the sleeping position creates a double bed from about knees upwards. Honeymoon seats are a remarkably popular choice for airlines wanting to appeal to the growing premium leisure market.

There’s a 23.8” seatback screen that looks very generous at the distance it will be installed from the passenger, and an overshoulder belt means that the ongoing issues of screen shatter during impact testing can be avoided. Korean Air says that the two USB-C sockets will provide 60W to devices. Passengers may also avail of not just one, but “dual 220V/110V outlets.

Overhead view of Prestige 2.0 with large IFE screens and rich brown CMF.

Prestige class passengers can enjoy 24-inch (60 cm) 4K monitors with Bluetooth audio. Image: Korean Air

A small cabinet with an internally mirrored door sits next to the passenger’s head, holding the airline’s headphones and offering space for the contents of one’s pockets. There’s a small shelf for wireless charging, and fingers crossed it will be better than the rather spotty other wireless charging functionality I’ve tried since it arrived on aircraft.

The colour, materials, and finish are a surprise for Korean Air, which has previously focussed heavily on its Morning Calm blue for seat cushions and a bright series of whites for the surrounds. This, by contrast, is brown. More accurately, it’s BROWN. I tried to number the various browns, chocolates, espressos, tans, taupes and beiges on the seat and ran out of fingers long before I was finished.

Altogether, it’s quite effective if you like a deep, dark brown seat, especially in some of the smaller images that feature natural window light and thoughtful LED cabin lighting. I wonder what the implications will be for the wider Korean Air brand, especially as the merger with Asiana progresses: there’s a lot of colour, motif and shape equity in this hard product that looks like it ought to transfer elsewhere.

The reduction in the same material and colour interfacing with each other is a smart move by whoever designed the seat: this allows a substantial amount of colour synchronisation and pattern-matching leeway when assembling the seat.

The backrest seat cover features a new diagonally-slashed dark brown pattern that doesn’t speak to previous brand elements, while the headrest appears to be leather or faux leather in a similar dark brown. The curving side console is mostly a semi-matte deep brown with a metallic top within the same palette, while the cabinet door gleams with a brushed coppery-almond metallic effect. The interior door shroud and the rear behind the head (increasingly visible as the seat reclines) are a lighter, textured tan that echoes the diagonal slashes.

After sifting through my photo library of the current range of forward-facing staggered seats with doors, I suspect that this is most likely to be the Collins Aerospace Horizon suites. Apart from the size, space and height, the most likely hints for me are the knee-level storage for a water bottle, which is very much a Horizon signature.

Horizon first broke cover in early 2019 aboard Aeroflot’s first Airbus A350, and which are currently also flying with a light refresh on other airlines’ A350s including, I understand, Turkish Airlines and Air India.

Aeroflot Horizon seat in blue with light brown head rests and accents.

Image: John Walton

Down back onboard the Korean Air 787-10, economy class features seats in a 3-3-3 configuration with what the carrier calls “vibrant woven patterns of bold colors.” The seats offer a recline of up to 120 degrees with headrests adjustable in multiple directions for optimal comfort. Pitch is 32 inches (81 cm), whilst seat width is 17.2 inches (44 cm).