Inside British Airways new A320neo aircraft with its super-thin seats and power sockets

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• Stephen Lynn says:

  21 Apr21 April 07:32

  This plan is flying LHR to Warsaw this morning. The new power sockets work well. Hard to say on the new seats on the back half of the plane as we are in the second exit row. Exit row leg room is great. Feels more than it was?

  The toilet is very small and unless you are very slim hard to move around in. The water from the tap appears to be mixed with air or there is air in the pipes.

  The first twelve rows have adjustable head rests.

• TripRep says:

  21 Apr21 April 07:32

  Looks tight to get in there.

  Is the seat pitch also narrowed?

• Lumma says:

  21 Apr21 April 07:43

  If my flight is showing 30 rows on an a320 (I think in the seat selection page they call the aircraft type 32A rather than 320) on my flight back from Budapest, will thus be the new plane? The outbound only has 28 rows

• Nick Haste says:

  21 Apr21 April 07:46

  I flew home on this aircraft last night

  Dreadful.

  Uncomfortable, cramped and for me another step towards the letters BA meaning Budget Airline.

  Something peculiar, normally a Gold Card holder can book decent a seat, the flight was booked 3 weeks ago and I could only reserve an aisle in row 18 at that time, all other seats closer to the front were blocked – although a non frequent flying colleague was assigned a seat in row 9.

  My ticket was hand luggage, are BA changing the seat rules for this plane configuration?

  I’m a regular flier on this route, perhaps it’s time to Take Another Plane (TAP) and use this service instead.

  All, please do not be excited by this 320neo, it’s another step backwards for an airline I cherish. This is the first time I’ve contributed on this website – last nights experience was woefully bad.

  • Gavin T says:

    21 Apr21 April 08:23

    Not really sure what in any of that is so bad that is actually about the aircraft?

  • Lady London says:

    21 Apr21 April 12:35

    Got a feeling HBO can’t book seats. Regardless of status.

    • Rob says:

      21 Apr21 April 14:22

      You can now, changed last year. Massive issues with companies who insisted on lowest fare then left status holders in middle seats at the back – so they defected.

      • Lady London says:

        21 Apr21 April 20:36

        Haha. So British Airways does listen to some people then.
        Well, to corporates at least.

    • RussellH says:

      21 Apr21 April 18:54

      I surprised myself by being able to book exit row seats on an A320 in both directions LHR-NCE-LHR 7 days before flying; hand baggage only fare in O class. Only just made bronze so very new to this sort of thing!!
      🙂

  • Lumma says:

    21 Apr21 April 14:33

    Isn’t row 9 the worst row on the plane? The one without the overhead vents? Or maybe 3 weeks ago 9 was in club, there wasn’t enough passengers in club so it got reconfigured with fewer club seats so HBO passenger got auto assigned that row

• Andy S says:

  21 Apr21 April 07:50

  It’s Thameslink in the air!

  I wish Deutsche Bahn would finally start a train service from London to Germany. Sitting on a comfortable ICE 3 is far more attractive than this!

  • Gavin T says:

    21 Apr21 April 08:25

    Have you tried it then? As someone else said, EasyJet use the same seats (just for the whole plane, not half of it) – they look odd but I certainly wouldn’t describe them as uncomfortable.

  • Gavin T says:

    21 Apr21 April 08:26

    Agreed on the train though.

  • Aeronaut says:

    21 Apr21 April 10:40

    I think DB have given up on the train to London, for now at least.

    • Lady London says:

      21 Apr21 April 12:32

      Very nice deals if you buy rail to German through Thalys, though, last legs will be on the ICE it seems which can be nice.

      • Lumma says:

        21 Apr21 April 14:38

        Bahn.de sell a”London Special” ticket that includes Eurostar from Brussels (maybe even Amsterdam now) plus 1 or 2 sectors in the ICE trains. It been a while since I checked but I think it started at €89 one way in standard and €129 in first.

        Pretty long journey if you’re heading to eastern Germany though

      • RussellH says:

        21 Apr21 April 19:04

        The London Special can be an excellent deal. Book well in advance and you can get First for around €30,– more than Second. It does have to be DB all the way (so no Thalys connections out of Bruxelles allowed), but AFAIK you can book to anywhere.

        I have done Leipzig->London and Stralsund->London in First; yes, it is a longish trip, but far more comfortable than flying. No comfortable aircraft seating offered on that sort of distance.

    • RussellH says:

      21 Apr21 April 19:44

      From what I read, they say that they have not given up, but I think that is now just lip service (sadly, I no longer have any contacts at their Surbiton Office).
      Running through trains from St Pancras to Germany was never the problem. This is, as long as our politicians are paranoid about controlling the physical frontier and so insist on being a complete PITA to anyone wanting to (re)enter the country (rather than using intelligent means to prevent entry of those few who really are undesirable), the fact is that DB will not be able to run a train from Frankfurt or Düsseldorf to London, as they need to make intermediate stops in Köln, Aachen and Liège, as a very minimum, in order to make the service commercially viable.

      • Lady London says:

        21 Apr21 April 20:38

        @Lumma I did that special from Munich to London in First Class a couple of years ago for 99euros.

  • Graham Walsh says:

    21 Apr21 April 21:30

    But BA get you there. Thameslink will happily leave you stranded 🙂

• GOONFACE says:

  21 Apr21 April 08:38

  I’ve tried these seats on an AirAsia flight and they aren’t bad and do provide some comfort. However, the slightest miniscule touches from the passenger behind is felt, making the whole chair move.

  It also appears that there is better leg room too, not much but enough to notice.

• Tony says:

  21 Apr21 April 08:58

  Reckon same as Easyjet and other LCC’s. OK for 2/3 hours.
  New trains coming into service the same.

  • Lady London says:

    21 Apr21 April 11:32

    There used to be something called “The First Class Sleeper”.
    I have one somewhere. It was originally to help people sleep on long haul flights in Economy seats. It looks like it can’t possibly work. I can’t normally sleep on planes but I slept the 9 hours or so from takeoff in Singapore to landing in Auckland in mine the one time I used it.

    I’m going to dig it out and start carrying it on these new planes now.

• James says:

  21 Apr21 April 09:08

  I had the the displeasure of being on BAs 3rd flight of the NEO to Lisbon on Monday . It was a full flight and the experience was grim! Crammed in like sardines and I gave up trying to work on my laptop in the end.

  Thankfully the flight back yesterday wasn’t the NEO!

  I fly ABZ to LHR very frenetic and dread these coming/ seat conversions.

  On a positive note, it was shiny and new!

  • Andrew says:

    22 Apr22 April 19:23

    2+2 on Flybe instead?

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