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Back in March, British Airways announced that it would introduce new seats to select short-haul aircraft, and now that we’re a few months on, we’re starting to see aircraft sporting the Collins Aerospace Meridian seat taking to the skies.
Recently and unexpectedly, I found myself traveling on a new British Airways A320neo aircraft which had been fitted with the airline’s new short-haul cabins, so I took the opportunity to take a few pictures and a few notes.
The aircraft with the new seats
As things stand, only new deliveries of Airbus A320neo and A321neo aircraft appear to be getting the new seats. To the best of my knowledge (someone correct me if I’m wrong), British Airways hasn’t said whether it will retrofit these seats to its existing short-haul fleet.
What this means is that at the time of writing, only a handful of aircraft delivered from April 2024 onwards (5 x A320neo & 2 x A321neo) have this seat.
Club Europe
Don’t expect a revolution, expect a minor evolution if you find yourself boarding one of the aircraft with the new seats.
As with all British Airways short-haul Business Class cabins (Club Europe cabins), most seats in this Business Class cabin continue to offer no more legroom than the seats in first few rows of Economy Class, and they continue to offer significantly less legroom than the seats in the exit rows (which are usually, but not always, part of the Economy Class cabin).
The Club Europe cabin also continues to be separated from the Economy Class cabin by a moveable curtain which allows the airline to right-size its Business Class offering according to the route being flown and demand.
The new cabin does, however, showcase a nice new color palette, an interesting, stitched design, and the welcome return of the table in the blocked center seat.
The seats in Club Europe now all offer 60W charging via USB-C and USB-A ports which are found on the back of the seat ahead (in row 1, these are found under the seats).
All the seats in this cabin also continue to offer 3″ of recline and 4-way adjustable headrests.
Economy class
Seat color and design aesthetics aside, you won’t find that very much has changed in Economy Class.
Any seats assigned to Economy class ahead of the exit rows continue to offer the same amount of pitch (legroom) as the seats in Club Europe/Business Class (30″) but they don’t have the blocked center seat.
The exit row seats (rows 11 and 12 on the A320neo) continue to offer the most pitch out of any seat onboard (34″ & 35″).
And the seats from row 13 to the back continue to offer, at most, 29″ of pitch … and that’s horribly tight if you’re flying one of the longer short-haul routes.
That all being said, not everything has remained the same.
Any seats assigned to Economy Class from row 12 forwards will enjoy 60W charging …
… while all the seats from row 13 back only get 15W charging (I have no idea why).
The seat back looks different in the new cabin …
… and I think (but I can’t be sure), that the tray tables are smaller than the ones in the older A320s.
Lastly, an important difference between this cabin and the cabins you’ll find on most other British Airways short-haul aircraft is that this cabin offers the new, larger, overhead bins in which roll aboard bags are stored sideways.
This isn’t the only British Airways short-haul cabin to offer these bins (a few other aircraft delivered before April 2024 have them), but if you walk onboard and see the new seats, you’re guaranteed to also have more overhead storage.
Overall
The new cabins look nicer than the old ones, they see the return of the center table in Club Europe, they feature USB-C and USB-A 60W charging for rows 1 to 12 (on the A320neos), and they come with the new, larger, overhead bins.
Other than that, not much has changed. The seats with the most legroom continue to be the exit row seats. The seats with most guaranteed personal space continue to be in Club Europe (courtesy of the blocked middle seat), and the seats where you’re most likely to be miserable and found cursing the airline continue to be all the seats behind the exit rows.
Yes, the new seats represent a makeover of sorts, but it’s not really a major one.
EuroBusiness class is a joke. Seriously, even airlines from third world countries have far better offerings than a stiff ULCC-style seat with 28″ pitch. That the European airlines have the unmitigated gall to charge double or more for this crap than they do for economy is mind boggling. In spite of this incredibly galling frugality, Europeans continue to insist that US airlines are somehow inferior. LOL, you can get a (far) better business class experience on United Express from Chicago to Louisville, KY than you get on the supposedly world-class airlines between London and Berlin. Until they remedy this, it’s not worth considering a product such as this, new seats or not.