[WillieWelsh]

Seats that are flat at 180 are not always better than angled seats. I’m thinking here of the ones that resemble coffins like BA and my most recent horror was on Austrian where I was flat but couldn’t move my feet and couldn’t change position at all. The seat did not either work well as a recliner as the armrest blocks on either side were hard and the seat was narrow. I prefer a good old fashioned recliner over any coffin seat any time of the day or night.

Cathay, Singapore, Qatar and a few more have what you might call proper flat seats which are not coffins and they are very good products and not anything like either the poor experience on BA or Austrian – at least on Austrian the food is good.

[DontTurnRight]

A little aside. Whilst the A380 business class seats are all lie flat, there is a difference in leg room with the A,J,E and F seats having considerably more room than the other seats. The crew on a flight earlier this month had not even realized this and were somewhat taken aback once I pointed it out to them.

[AllOverTheGaff]

cityprofessional – 12/05/2015 17:43 BST
But, hey, if you prefer sleeping on a bed that slopes onto the floor,

They don’t.

[rferguson]

Awful copy but very funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMTllQ9_rOw

[fclswannabe]

Agree with all points raised above. Am not keen to fly EK Biz at all with the angled lie-flat as it’s very narrow, and if seated in middle or at window, then no direct aisle access. Surprising that a supposedly premium carrier like Emirates has not improved its Business product to compete with the likes of Qatar. Personally, my favourite is the Zodiac Cirrus seat, as available on CX and QR long-haul.

[IanFromHKG]

Personally (and as a lawyer!) I prefer the terms “angled-flat” and “fully-flat”/”flat bed”. I think these are unambiguous. Unfortunately, lie-flat isn’t unambiguous – but it is disingenuous…

[esselle]

IanFromHKG
I would rather see “horizontal” and “lie flat”. The problem with “angled” is that it would need to be qualified by “how many degrees” to have any meaning.

[IanFromHKG]

Well, I am still concerned with the term “lie flat”. I agree the angle is of concern, but once a person knows that they are getting angled flat it isn’t that hard to find out what the angle is (seatguru, seatplans, seatmaestro…)

[rferguson]

Codeshares used to cause so much confusion and grief for passengers when they first started becoming commonplace. A passenger would book say a Qantas flight in Business Class, via qantas.com with a Qantas flght number and then rock up to the airport on the day to find themself on a BA operated flight. Where airlines offered a similar product people rarely complained. But sometimes the ‘operating’ carrier was hugely inferior to the carrier the passenger ‘thought’ they were travelling with. So – IATA mandated that the operating carrier of a flight has to be clearly displayed to the passenger when they book a flight online and informed verbally if booked over the phone.

Personally – I believe the same thing should apply to seats. Especially Business/First class ones. Airlines should have to spell out in clear terms exactly what seat the passenger is booking – whether it be a cradle seat, angle flat, fully flat etc etc. I also believe that airlines should have to advise passengers of aircraft substitutions if it involves a change of aircraft with an inferior seat offering.

Some people book a particular flight on the basis of needing to depart or arrive at a certain time and that is their priority. Others book a particular flight because their priority is a fully flat bed – and they chose a particular flight number because that’s what it is selling. I feel airlines should be held to count if they change the product – there should be an industry wide agreement requiring them to advise of a change of aircraft if it’s in advance and offer passengers in premium cabins the ability to switch for free to an alternative service if seats are available.

Like everything it’s down to commercial and compeitive pressure. No airline that I know of offers this. I reckon if a few did start – there would be competitive pressure for others to follow.

Some airlines products are not so different and a change is nothing to (literally) lose sleep over. But others in my experience have been more extreme. On Qatar I have had an A350 flight subbed to a A330 (non flat bed config) and a A330 flight subbed to a A321. The variations in what I felt I should have got and what I did get were worlds apart. And when I complained to QR – not interested. They were within the terms of carriage. #firstworldproblems I know. But it wasn’t so long ago that you could be due to fly from Budapest to London on any european airline, they could cancel the flight on the day with no reason whatsoever and say ‘here’s your money back – find your own way home’. That was the case for years and airlines were within their rights to do that. Thankfully, things changed. Regulations were brought in and they can’t do that anymore. Despite the protests from the airlines noone went out of business because of it. The same thing should happen for product downgrades IMHO.

[IanFromHKG]

rferguson, I absolutely agree. We all know aircraft substitutions are an inescapable fact of life, but as you say the seat may be a major priority for the passenger. I posted on here before about my travails with Finnair when they switched planes on us three times. My flat (pardon the pun) refusal to fly on anything other than a full flat bed ended up causing us quite a significant amount of money and delay, not all of which could have been avoided if Finnair had kept us informed but which would have been a lot less stressful.

In fairness, Finnair were very apologetic about the situation and went out of their way to ameliorate the situation (short of subbing ‘planes back, of course!). So I was upset about the changes, but not sufficiently upset to avoid flying Finnair again, since the effort they put into service recovery (not wholly successful, as you can gather, but my goodness they tried!) was above and beyond.

[Author]

Posts