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Updated: A fear I had about the possible sleeping position has been allayed
Finnair has been teasing this for weeks, but today the teasing ended and the airline finally unveiled its new Business Class cabin, a reworked Economy Class cabin, and announced that it will be introducing a long-haul Premium Economy cabin for the first time in its history. This post will look a the new Business Class cabin while subsequent posts will explore the new Economy and Premium Economy cabins.
Finnair new Business Class
Finnair will be the first airline to fit its aircraft with the new Collins Aerospace AirLounge seat and this is the seat that will finally give Finnair a consistent Business Class hard product across all of its long-haul aircraft.
The new Business Class cabin will have a 1-2-1 layout – just like the airline’s A350s but an improvement on the airline’s A330s – and will look like this:
Finnair has said that the seats have been designed to maximize a passenger’s comfort and space and to give passengers the freedom to move during their flight.
Per Finnair:
“The seat’s innovative fixed contoured shell with no recline enables a wide variety of sitting and sleeping positions: you can sit at different angles, rest your feet on the ottoman or use infill panels to create a large flat surface. A mattress and duvet turn the space into a comfortable bed, and you can use the cushy pillows to relax in a variety of sitting positions. The high cocoon like shell of the seat provides privacy, while the divider between central seats can be lowered when travelling with a companion.”
Impressively (assuming this to be true), the new seat is said to have enough storage options to allow a passenger to put away their personal items, laptops, and also any pillows and bedding that are provided while keeping everything close to hand (i.e this doesn’t include the overhead bins).
In keeping with the modern nature of the new cabin, each seat comes with impressive connectivity, including USB-A, USB-C, regular power outlets, and wireless mobile charging.
All of Finnair’s long-haul aircraft are already equipped with in-flight WiFi.
Which aircraft and when is the refit happening?
Finnair will be rolling out the “full cabin renewal” of its entire long-haul fleet in the next two years and this will see the airline’s Airbus A330 and A350 aircraft refitted with this new Business Class product.
The A350s will be losing their popular reverse herringbone seats (very similar to the seats found on a significant number of American Airlines 777 aircraft) while the A330s will be losing their less popular (and denser) Business Class cabin.
The airline will announce the first routes to get the new products on 1 March 2022 and at the same time, will open up bookings for those routes.
Initial thoughts
On the face of things, this looks like a very impressive seat with plenty of storage space, great new connectivity options, and quite a bit of privacy and all of that makes me excited to try this seat out as soon as I can.
At first, I was a little concerned about the sleeping position but a new image that we’ve been given has allayed my fears somewhat.
From the fist images we were provided, it’s was hard to tell if the seats and sleeping position are both angled or if the seats face directly forwards and the sleeping position is angled and I was concerned that if the latter was the case, we may have a situation similar to the one on the Singapore Airlines A380 where the space for a passenger’s feet doesn’t line up with the seat (see image below).
I know of quite a few people who find it hard to get a comfortable night’s rest when in the Singapore Airlines A380 Business Class seat (personally, I don’t have an issue with it) so that could have suggested a problem with the new Finnair seat.
Fortunately, a new image which we now have (and a closer look at the position of the IFE screens) shows that both the seat and the sleeping position are angled so no contortion should be required to get a good few hours of rest 🙂
Clearly, it’s impossible to tell from a few images just how good or bad a product will be in practice so we’ll have to wait until the first real world reviews start coming in before we start to get a definitive verdict but on first glace, this looks like a promising development from Finnair.
Bottom line
Finnair has announced a new Business Class cabin that it will be retrofitting to its A330 and A350 aircraft over the next two years.
Overall, the new cabin looks great, the seats look spacious, the privacy looks good, the descriptions of the storage space on offer and the various device changing options sound impressive so this will almost certainly be a big step up from the Business Class seats that Finnair currently offers on its A330s (where personal space is at a premium if you don’t get a “throne seat”). The step from the A350 Business Class cabin will be considerably smaller as the A350s still have a great Business Class seat but the improved connectivity and added storage space will probably be very welcome.
What do you think of the new Finnair Business Class cabin and seats?
