Emirates new 777 business class brings fleet up to A380 standard

Emirates is playing it safe — perhaps too safe? — with its refurbished Boeing 777 business class seats, which are very similar to the staggered product it has been flying for two decades on its Airbus A380s. The first of some 80 previous-generation 777s that the airline is revamping is now flying on the Geneva route, and refurbished planes will initially be deployed to Tokyo Haneda and Brussels as well.

Impressively, in the context of industry business class seat production woes leading to months of delays in some cases, the first refurbished 777 re-entered service four days in advance of the announced schedule.

The seat is nothing revolutionary: a simple staggered business class seat that’s fundamentally the same as the one Emirates introduced with its first A380 in 2008.

Without doors or privacy-by-design, it lags behind the competition, especially in the seats directly adjacent to the aisle, which suffer from the zero-sum problems of many staggered seats: a lack of privacy and being disturbed by passengers and crew brushing past.

There are a few changes compared with the previous upgraded Skylounge version, unveiled for the A380 in 2021. The overall look and feel leans towards a new brassy gold on the horizontal surfaces and high-touch areas like the rim of the seat shell.

This replaces a light steel coloured support metal effect and some — but by no means all — of the signature Emirates faux burled walnut of which the airline is so very fond. Glossy thermoplastics remain on the seat shrouding in front of each passenger.

The minibar and side table are substantially larger, too, with an extended diagonal shrouding that extends the brassy gold for the window-adjacent and middle-pair seats, making these even more private than before.

Sensibly, the “tower of power” for charging and headphones has been moved from over the passenger’s shoulder to along the bottom of the minibar element, with a universal AC power port plus USB-C socket, a separate combo USB A + C outlet, and tri-socket noise cancelling headphone plug.

The AC port is on its side, so it will be interesting to see how the larger “wall wart” style of charger works with this, especially those using the two flat pronged US style of plug.

Pleasingly, the seat controls appear to be actual buttons rather than the capacitative touchscreen style of control that moves the seat if passengers so much as rest an arm on them.

The look and feel remains a sort of deposed dictator chic, with even more brassy bling and no burled walnut left behind, even down to the window shrouding, although it’s interesting to note that the double-window-shroud of the A380 does not extend to the 777.

While these seats are nothing new in concept, Emirates will benefit from the 16 years of improvements it has had the opportunity to make to its product since it arrived on the A380, with a larger 23” inflight entertainment screen and improved kinematics.

Runway Girl Network presumes that this seat remains the Safran Seats Skylounge product from the A380s, which is manufactured by its Safran Seats France subsidiary in Issoudun. (Safran did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation; it is, of course, August in France.)

The wider 777 cabin, of course, means a wider seat is possible: 20.7 inches in seat mode and a bed reclining to 78.6 inches (2 metres, or just over 6’6”) when flat.

The refurbishment took 37 days and 18,000 person-hours to complete for the first 777, which will presumably tighten as processes are improved and installers gain experience.

“Once the project is complete, the airline will have installed 8,104 next-generation Premium Economy seats, 1,894 refreshed First-Class suites, 11,182 upgraded Business Class seats and 21,814 Economy Class seats,” says Emirates.

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All images credited to Emirates