Earlier today my colleague Mark Caswell reported on Emirates’ first A380 which would be arriving and fitted with its new premium economy seating.
Since then more details of the seating have become available.
Emirates president Sir Tim Clark has revealed to Germany’s Aero.de that the seat manufacturer will be Recaro.
Quoted by Aero.de, Sir Tim Clark said, “The first A380 with the new cabin is about to be delivered at [the] Airbus [plant] in Hamburg.”
Only one of three A380s to be delivered shortly to Emirates is fitted with the premium economy seats.
“We will really have a head start with it [premium economy],” said Clark, referring to Emirates’ rivals.
Premium economy on the existing three-class A380s will be located on the lower deck at the front.
Sir Tim refers to the new seats as being “Recaro Sleeperetes”, but they will not be lie-flat as some readers might be thinking.
No details of the *exact* Recaro seat type have been made available, but the above details indicate it will resemble other premium economy models. Recaro has a model it calls Recaro PL3530. It is available in various configurations, and has been sold to China Southern for its A350s and Vistara for its B787-9 aircraft. An artist’s impression of Vistara’s B787-9 premium economy seating (Recaro PL3530) is below.
For Emirates’ A380 there will be 58 seats configured eight-across 2-4-2. Seat pitch is 38 ins.
On Emirates two-class A380s customers will find Premium Economy on the upper deck at the front.
Here there will be 52 to 56 seats. Configuration and seat pitch details are not available. The configuration will doubtless be different as the upper deck is narrower than the lower deck, so perhaps 2-3-2 as pictured.
Although the new seating will be available before then the official launch is not until mid-2021.
Says Sir Tim, “We have to have a critical mass of aircraft with the new seating before we can offer it.”
And specific routes will not be announced until the end of 2021.
By “critical mass” Sir Tim means that as a sixth-freedom carrier connecting passengers at Dubai will almost certainly end up travelling on a different aircraft which may or may not have premium economy.
Emirates says premium economy will be installed on the other aircraft types in its fleet at a later date.
