Air France’s new business class seats are coming to some of its A350 fleets

A new business class cabin is coming to Air France’s fleet of Airbus A350s – or at least, some of them.

The airline introduced new business class seats for its A350 during the Aircraft Interiors Show in Hamburg, Germany, this week; that is an almost identical product with what it recently introduced for its fleet of Boeing 777s.

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According to the airline, the new business class cabin will have 48 seats, arranged in a 1-2-1 inverted herringbone configuration. For comparison, the airline’s current A350 business class cabin has 34 staggered business class seats.

New seats with sliding doors, plenty of storage space and automatic window blinds.

There is, however, a catch: The new seats are only offered for newly delivered A350s from Airbus. The airline has no plans to go back and retrofit the fleet it already flies.

The airline currently operates 20 A350-900s and has 21 more on order. The first one will be delivered and put into service in July with a new cabin.

This complicates passengers, who will need to look closely to see what type of A350 their flight will be on. The new configuration accommodates a total of 292 passengers — 48 business class seats, 32 premium economy seats and 212 economy class seats — compared to 324 passengers in the current cabin — 34 business class seats, 24 economy seats Premium economy and 266 economy class seats.

With such a large capacity mismatch, it can be a logistical nightmare in the event of a device swap. This means that the airline will not be able to replace the new A350s with the old ones. It is not clear if Air France plans to operate the new jets as a separate fleet.

Regardless, the new heavyweight premium configuration means there will be more premium business and economy seats on some routes, so there will be more opportunities to chase reward flights. or upgrade.