British Airways intends to complete the Heathrow rollout of its new Club Suite business class product by 2025, although it will be on over 90 per cent of intended long-haul aircraft by 2023.
The graph above was published as part of BA’s parent company International Airline Group’s Capital Markets Day – the full presentation of which can be seen here.
By the end of this year around 5 per cent of aircraft operating at Heathrow will have been fitted with the new seat, comprising of four new A350 deliveries, and two B777-200 retrofits.
Next year will see new B787-10 aircraft introduced with the seat, as well as it starting to be fitted to B777-300s, and by the end of 2020 the carrier should be around a third of the way through the rollout.
This figure will rise to 52 per cent in 2021 as B787-8s join the rollout, then 79 per cent in 2022 as the first B777-9 aircraft are scheduled to be delivered.
By 2023 the rollout will be 92 per cent complete, with the intention to start retrofitting the first of the carrier’s A380 superjumbos in that year, and by 2024 a total of 97 per cent of all aircraft will be fitted.
There are no plans to retrofit the Club Suite to BA’s B747 jumbos, the last of which are set to be retired by 2024, and the presentation also confirmed that although BA will begin replacing its B777 aircraft from next year, it is the intention to continue operating eight of its B777-200s until 2029.
Note also (as pointed out by one of our readers in the comments below), that the published rollout only refers to aircraft based at Heathrow – no figures have been given for a similar rollout at Gatwick.
British Airways unveiled the Club Suite in March this year, before launching the seat firstly on crew familiarisation flights to Madrid, and then on its Heathrow-Dubai route from September. Business Traveller reviewed the inaugural services for both of these services:
- Flight review: British Airways A350-1000 inaugural, Heathrow to Madrid
- Flight review: british Airways A350-1000 inaugural, Heathrow to Dubai
The new suite features a sliding door, 40 per cent more storage, and a 1-2-1 layout with direct aisle access for all passengers. For more information, and an interview with BA’s CEO Alex Cruz regarding the seat, see:
We have also published a list of the current and forthcoming BA destinations to feature the A350-1000 and Club Suite, with routes including Toronto, Tel Aviv and Bengaluru.
