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Emirates announces the first Boeing 777 routes with its new business class

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Back in May, I was onboard one of Emirates’ newly refurbished A380s to review their new premium economy cabins and refurbished business class seat.

Something more exciting is on the horizon, however: the launch of a brand-new next generation business class seat.

Whilst business class on its flagship A380s is very comfortable, it’s a different story on its older fleet of Boeing 777s. Most of these planes have angled-flat seats in a 2-3-2 configuration without direct aisle access. As a consequence, it’s one of the least competitive business class products out there.

The good news is that plans to change this have been in the works for some time. The first of the airline’s 81 Boeing 777s to be retrofitted went into the hangar this month, and Emirates has now announced that the refurbished plane will start flying by mid August to and from Geneva.

Emirates expects each plane refurbishment to take approximately two weeks, and from September you’ll find two more routes getting the new cabins:

  • EK312 and EK313 to and from Tokyo Haneda from 1st September 2024
  • EK183 and EK184 to and from Brussels from 11th September 2024

It’s not yet clear what exactly the new business class cabins will look like. Here’s what we know so far:

  • It will feature a 1-2-1 layout
  • Based on the seat map, it appears to be a staggered layout
  • There will be 38 seats in business class
  • Seat pitch (legroom) is 44″ (111cm) – this is the measurement of the back of the seat in front to the back of your seat. Seats are longer in bed mode.
  • Seat are 20.7″ (53cm) wide
  • The seat will feature a 23″ touch screen

In another change, the refurbished aircraft will feature premium economy seating for the first time.

Adnan Kazim, Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer, Emirates Airline said that the new cabins “borrow inspiration from our flagship A380”, echoing what Tim Clark told me when I interviewed him earlier this year.

It’s not clear if this means it is based on the same platform as the A380 seat – but with newer tech – or the totally new seat which was planned for the Boeing 777Xs. It’s possible that Emirates has pulled forward the launch of that seat given the multi-year delays it is facing on 777X deliveries.

Fortunately, with first flights less than a month away, we don’t have long to wait.


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How to earn Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards (February 2025)

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Cards earning Membership Rewards points include:

Membership Rewards points convert at 4:3 into Emirates Skywards miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 0.75 Emirates Skywards miles

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Comments (20)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • BJ says:

    Would you credit it, yet another airline lacking the financial astuteness of IAG, and the wisdom of HfP staff and selected readers.

  • G says:

    Yet the European Commission are fighting IAG tooth and nail over acquisition of Air Europa and took significant lobbying to approve the Korean Air / Asiana merger?

    Something doesn’t add up.

    • Rob says:

      You don’t think a deal which gives one company a virtual monopoly on the domestic Spanish market (if you exclude Canaries flights) is different to one which has minimal impact on completion in Italy?

      Only issues are reduced competition on transatlantic in Europe – but ITA is so small it’s a non-issue – and on routes from Italy to other Lufthansa hubs.

      • G says:

        Not particularly, Spain’s domestic demand is limited due to its rail network. Provided the canaries and balaerics are protected, I don’t see the issue.

        Lufthansa on the other hand will soon own a 5th flag carrier, and the situation with German air fares is incredibly poor, with LH stifling competition at its hubs vs others (I think this is oneworld propaganda, but CDG/AMS/FRA etc are much more controlled by skyteam/star than oneworld do at LHR/MAD.

        • Rob says:

          Buying ITA will have no impact on German air fares though, except on FRA / MUC / VIE / BRU / ZRH / GVA to Italy, and there will be slot divestments and potentially other restrictions on those routes.

          Remember that ITA isn’t even the biggest airline in Italy – that honour goes to Ryanair.

          Luckily the EU does see the issue with IAG buying Air Europa and this is likely to fail. The last offer from IAG was to give away 40% of routes. The problem is that IAG wants to create a competitor from scratch (there are no other competitors who could take on Air Europa routes, of course, because IAG has bought them up) and would simply dump the worst routes, worst staff and worst aircraft into this Newco which would fail within a year.

          • Numpty says:

            They increased the offer, from giving away 40% of routes up to 52%, for whatever that is worth to the remaining competition to take up. That, and IAG started a small share buy back yesterday. It is all looking a bit too forced now.

          • ChrisBCN says:

            Actually Volotea could probably pick up the domestic routes pretty easily, it’s the South American routes where there isn’t anybody obvious to pick them up.

            But they would have to be given some good routes.

        • JDB says:

          @G – Spain is Europe’s largest domestic flight market …

          • Bagoly says:

            By value, passenger km, or some other measure?
            Is that due to all the islands?

          • JDB says:

            @Bagoly – that figure is by value – €2.4bn in Spain, €2.1bn in Italy and €1.7bn in France. The figures were presented by IAG at their Capital Markets Day and were taken from Q2 2023 data provided by IATA DDS. Yes, I think the islands are a significant contributory factor. Also, if you look at the train network/services a lot of trips aren’t easy and aren’t cheap.

  • David S says:

    How can Emirates refit an aircraft every two weeks when BA takes forever. Is Emirates really good at doing refurbs or is BA really bad ?

    • JDB says:

      @David S – Emirates has more flex in its schedules to take aircraft out of service, but they are saying that each refit will take two weeks, not that the new seat will be in every aircraft in two weeks x the number of aircraft. Note also that Emirates are installing far fewer Club seats than BA – 38 whereas BA 777s have up to 76?

      But anyway, BA’s slow progress to install Club Suite is not entirely in its gift. There’s a global shortage of seats and other relevant parts – even Airbus recently announced a slowdown in aircraft production owing to shortages and they would be considered to have a phenomenal planning function. Look also at how long it is taking LH to introduce new business seats. BA is quite poor at some stuff but on this, they aren’t doing badly.

      • Nick says:

        In BA’s case their manufacturer can make 3 seats per day. Two weeks means 42 seats can be ready. For Emirates 77Ws this is enough for one aircraft, while for the same aircraft on BA it’s 34 short. That’s why it takes longer.

      • David S says:

        Thx – I was reading that Emirates are doing the complete refit including adding the PE seats as well as any overall colour scheme change in the 16 days, not just changing the Bus section of the aircraft. I’ll be the first to admit the only thing I know about Bus seats is actually trying them out on my travels and had suggested to Rob that an analysis of who makes what would make for a good article.
        In my ignorance, a company that makes 3 seats a day doesn’t sound world class and I genuinely don’t know what the constraining factors are. I’ve studied Economics are can’t understand why new entrants don’t come into the market, companies don’t work 7*24 or companies that make car seats don’t diversify. It’s a recognised problem and would love more info and would love BA to speed up and who knows find a way to either refurbish the Gatwick long haul fleet or push some older aircraft from LHR to LGW and if so when this is likely to take place. Eventually something has to happen. Rant over 🤪

        • JDB says:

          @David S – there are smaller new entrants but it’s a tough market to enter when you need to get certification for any new seat – so fairly big capital investment and long lead times before you get an order, let alone deliver a seat and get paid. These premium seats are customised for each airlines, sometimes unique, sometimes variants of a type but they are remarkably complex. There is less of an issue for eco seats.

          Your economics course maybe didn’t allow for covid and huge numbers of people (and experience) leaving the workforce and this is happening all over the world. Raw materials are an issue as well. Aircraft seats are just one of many shortages of components and other bottlenecks affecting many industries. People like Safran and Collins are pretty serious aerospace players.

          Anyone running complex projects will tell you of major issues getting skilled staff, procurement delays and still scary cost increases.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          Because the cost of entry is extremely high as is the length of time for R&D and engineering, tooling the parts and industrialising the production.

          Granted if all your supply base is within a small area geographically or you’re even doing it all yourself it might be easier / quicker.

          Btw the LHR 777 fleet is pretty much complete the LGW planes probably won’t be changed. Now the first 787-8 is out the way sure the other will follow just as quickly. Also like JDB it’s being able to take the planes out of service to be upgraded as well as the seat manufacturing. 777x and 787-10 delays certainly haven’t helped in that regard.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    As if there was any doubt HSBC have posted all the bonus Avios.

    • Geoff says:

      Not within the promised 14 days though.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        Depends when you transferred 155k on 27th June … so today is well within 14 days

        The 50k on 6th June is outside 14 days but extra 12k Avios that I’ve got makes up for the inconvenience … but maybe I’ll ask HSBC for £100 for my inconvenience since I’d already raised a complaint.

    • axel says:

      looks like they have also posted a bonus on the bonus

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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