[Anonymous]

[TravelFan]

As a frequent business as well as leisure traveller often using premium cabins, I am following the development of the long-haul first class market with interest. In addition to airlines’ own web sites and printed and on-line journals such as BT, there are some pretty good specialised websites such as airlinequality.com (Skytrax). However, it would be good to also have a forum to discuss this on a general level (rather than just debating the introduction of BA’s new First….), and I would be very interested to hear other frequent travellers’ view on this topic.

One thing I have noticed is that the discussion and attention most often revolves around a small number of leading players, but in reality there are a larger number of airlines offering long-haul first class to a greater or smaller extent. The established, major players appear to be British Airways, Lufthansa, Swiss, Air France, Gulf Air, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Air India, Jet Airways, American, United, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian, Thai, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Air China, China Airlines, China Eastern, Asiana, Korean Air, JAL, All Nippon and TAM. In addition to these 25 players, a few smaller or newer players in the F arena are Turkish, Royal Brunei (both leasing Jet Airways aircraft), Transaero (almost never mentioned in this context), Air Tahiti Nui and Oman Air. Dragonair also has international F but only on shorter regional routes (and more of a J style seat).

Additional airlines offering international F but with typically lower/older seat quality are Saudi Arabian, Kuwait, El Al, Egyptair, Air Algérie, TAAG Angola and Uzbekistan Airways. Marginal players are also Gabon Airlines and Air Ivoire, possibly also Yemenia and Hewa Bora. An odd player is SonAir flying between Luanda in Angola to Houston, Texas, including an F cabin….

Finally two question marks: Hainan Airlines appears to have taken over a few long-haul aircraft from Cathay Pacific with a real first class cabin, but my impression is that Hainan, whilst using the planes on long-haul routes, are selling the seats as business class. Any views on this? China Southern introduced real F on some of its A330s a few years ago, but I do not know on what routes these aircraft are being used. Anyone?

Have I missed anything??

[TravelFan]

I should clarify that in my post above I have taken a “technical” perspective to what is deemed “first class”, i e a long-haul cabin with two (or three) cabin classes below it on the same plane, and where the cabin is labelled “first class” by the airline – in other words without any analysis of the quality of seating or other aspects of the product. This means that there is a huge quality spread between the F products listed in my post, from the 2010 industry standard F cabins with individual flat bed seats to some of the African and Middle Eastern carriers whose “first class” seats do not even match the typical 1990s style cradle business class seat. On the other hand, the list excludes a number of excellent flat bed products that are technically business class but which are better than many of the lesser first class products.

Another important aspect is the extent or spread of the F product of a given airline. Below I list the approximate current number of F seats on each carrier’s fleet, based on public information on airlines’ web sites and other sources.

Saudi Arabian 1.410
Emirates 1.100
British Airways ca 1.000
American 902
United 870
Lufthansa ca 800
Singapore Airlines ca 700
Japan Airlines ca 500
Qantas ca 400
Air France 349
Cathay Pacific 314
Kuwait Airways 296
Korean 292
Etihad ca 275
Air China ca 250
Air India 208
Swiss ca 200
Qatar Airways ca 180
China Airlines ca 170
Thai Airways 168 (+ 84 old F)
Malaysia Airlines 156
Air Algérie 136
All Nippon 134
El Al 112
Gulf Air ca 100
China Eastern 100
Dragonair 96
Egyptair 96 (soon to be phased out?)
Transaero 81
Asiana ca 80
TAAG Angola ca 75
TAM Airlines 64
Uzbekistan Airways ca 60
US Airways 54
China Southern 32
Air Tahiti Nui 30
Air Mauritius ca 30 (phased out)
LAN 25 (phased out)
Jet Airways 24
Royal Brunei 24
Hainan Airlines 24
Gabon Airlines 20
Hellenic Imperial 16 (?)
Oman Air 12
SonAir 12
Yemenia 12
Air Ivoire 4

This shows that some well known airlines who get attention for their F products are in reality very small players in this market. One example is Jet Airways, who after leasing out several of its aircraft (to Turkish and recently Royal Brunei) with F to other airlines has very little F. A small number of leading players together represent a large part of the total global F offering in quantitative terms.

[Author]

Posts