New upper class seat

And French Bee which is surprising as they go 10 abreast in economy(!)

I was at the launch event on Monday and took some video of each of the new seats and the Loft. You can see this over on YouTube.

The Premium seat is narrower than the current ones, which was disappointing. It was noticeable when you sat in it. The space between the seats is also narrower.

The new Upper Class suite is very good with space beside the seat to put things down. I think Bluetooth headsets only applies in Upper. In both Economy and Premium, there are still headphone sockets.

The Loft is interesting. Ultimately it will all come down to how the space is crewed; will the cabin crew come out from the galley to offer drinks, or will you have to go to the galley to ask for drinks? It is a shame they have not copied Virgin Australia, who have a call bell in the bar area.

Wow. Thank you for an excellent video. It was almost as good as actually being there !

Travelled back in the new Qatar Q suite yesterday. superb! It shows up how far behind VS's current upper product is. Hope the new seat doesn't disappoint

Thanks very much Woralla. Was nice to relive the moment a little! Joey myself and horburyflyer were keen to say hello but you seemed to have evaded us! Haha.

First class video and review --- well done, will really miss the bar but the loft could evolve into something special if promoted correctly, hope it is staffed in someway.

The bar was always somewhere you could "join in" and mix with strangers, a tall stool was also different than sitting in your seat --- the loft being more enclosed could make it feel like your encroaching on a private group

[mitchja]

VS have uploaded their A350 seat map to their website now.

https://www.ausbt.com.au/virgin-atlantic-s-boeing-787-business-class-seat-will-be-a-new-design?
Thoughts?
I'm sure Shai Weiss said in an interview that the 787 and a333 were going to be retrofitted with the new seats.

You are allowed to quote extracts from a linked article so the contents are meaningful. Just posting a bald link is not helpful.

VS made no commitment that they would retrofit the new suite into the rest of the fleet (other than the 747 and A346 would be excluded due to their retirements). Nor did they say they wouldn't just that no decision had been made.

The article says that:

The first seven A350s will be delivered by late 2020 and will be based at London Heathrow and Manchester airports.

It suggests that the MAN aircraft will be in the same configuration and only the later deliveries for LGW will be leisure will c14 UC seats but more premium.

Suggests a lot of upper seats for Manchester?

The article says that:

The first seven A350s will be delivered by late 2020 and will be based at London Heathrow and Manchester airports.

It suggests that the MAN aircraft will be in the same configuration and only the later deliveries for LGW will be leisure will c14 UC seats but more premium.

Suggests a lot of upper seats for Manchester?

That leapt out as a surprise to me too. Hard to imagine MAN could sustain the A350 in the LHR config as much as I'd love it if it could. Over the last 4/5 years I've flown MAN - ATL a lot and up until recently I had a Y only travel policy. When this route was a 333 my upgrade success rate to UC was virtually 100% (either in advance or at the airport). I'm sure I'd read (perhaps even on VS' own site) that the A350 was due to serve LHR and LGW 1st? If I remember correctly, this seems to contradict that.

The other thing in the article is it looks to be confirmed, as I suspected, that The Loft won't exist on the leisure config which is a pity.

It was very nice for that short period after the 333's were refitted to think that it didn't matter what airport you departed from, what route you took or what aircraft you were on that the product in UC was going to be virtually identical. The introduction of the 332's put an end to that apart from virtually all LHR departures. Now we're looking at a potentially 3 different UC seats in operation, depending on how long the 332's stick around for. It's the main reason I avoid airlines like UA and AA, an aircraft swap could mean a big difference to your onboard experience.

https://www.ausbt.com.au/virgin-atlantic-s-boeing-787-business-class-seat-will-be-a-new-design?
Thoughts?
I'm sure Shai Weiss said in an interview that the 787 and a333 were going to be retrofitted with the new seats.

Could the seat recently fitted to the A330-200's be the Upper seat in question, or something completely different again? To me, the article raises more questions than answers.

As for the first seven planes being split between LHR and MAN, I wonder if the MAN routes are JFK and/or ATL? They're the only two routes I can think of that can sustain a high J offering. When DL used the A330-200 one summer to ATL a few years ago, that would have been configured with 32 J seats. This was before the JV with VS and swapping over to VS planes has helped grow the market and seeing AA withdraw their JFK route.

I was at the launch event on Monday and took some video of each of the new seats and the Loft. You can see this over on YouTube.

The Premium seat is narrower than the current ones, which was disappointing. It was noticeable when you sat in it. The space between the seats is also narrower.

Thanks for the feedback about the new PE seat. Confirms my suspicions that the dimensions where width was being reduced is for real and isn't perceived to be as wider as it looks. I'm sure those who haven't sat on the soon-to-be-old PE seat won't be disappointed, but as I alluded to last week it's less likely I'll be forking out the extra for PE over Economy Delight in the future which in one respect is a shame.