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Lufthansa New Business Class Seats Unveiled

by on March 8, 2012 · 10 comments

in Lufthansa

The new Lufthansa business class seats are angled toward one another like on Cathay Pacific.

Lufthansa has unveiled a new business class seat, which the airline plans to put in its forthcoming 747-800 aircraft from Boeing (which it will hopefully start taking delivery of later in 2012).

It’s about time since the current business class seats on the airline’s long-haul fleet, including the A380 I recently flew on the Star Megado, are still the old angled lie-flat which I find pretty uncomfortable.

The new seats are fully lie flat. About time!

These new seats will be fully lie-flat, and nearly 2 meters long (it’ll be 6 feet 6 inches), no specified width yet, though they’ll have 15.4-inch entertainment screens mounted in the seatbacks. They look kind of like Cathay’s new seats aboard the 777, which are angled with the heads at a good distance apart but the feet pointed toward the neighboring seat, which the airline calls the “V” configuration. The airline also says it has plans for an “H” configuration in which the seats will be angled away from each other—probably for use aboard the A380 when the airline retrofits it in the future.

Passengers seated on the window will have to climb over their seatmate to access the aisle.

Unlike Cathay’s seats, however, which are in a 1-2-1 configuration so that you don’t have to climb over anyone else to get out of your seat to the lavatory, it looks like Lufthansa’s will be 2-2-2 on the main deck and 2-2 on the 747’s upper deck, so the people at the windows might have some maneuvering to do.

Still, this is good news since Lufthansa has needed an updated of its business class for a while, and it’s great news for Star Alliance flyers since the airline tends to have great award availability. Hopefully that won’t change with the advent of these new seats as more flyers opt to take Lufthansa instead of other Star Alliance partners!

For more photos, Australian Business Traveller has a great gallery here, and Lufthansa has a cool video with renderings of the seat at this link.

Note: Photos by Jens Goerlich courtesy Lufthansa’s site.

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  • TravAdam

    Something I would like to see (as I am sure you would as well) is a 1x2x1 configuration with the overhead bins for the window seats be floor storage instead (ala upper deck on 747s). This would eliminate the second window seat would give more headroom when standing up.

  • Tao

    looks more spacious than Cathay’s new Biz seats

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=685121871 Christopher Wu

    I’ld like to see what they look like with a passenger in each seat fully flat.. the bottoms of the seat are sure close to each other, plus the foot division is just a little plastic dividier… it might be quite difficult to get out of the window seat..

  • RakSiam

    Lots of negative opinions over on Lucky’s blog. I am surprised they didn’t go for the staggered seats a la NH.

  • AKold

    BTW, it’s the 747-8 and not 747-800.

  • http://www.euanross.com Euan

    As I said on Ben’s blog, I think LH have missed a trick here and I think while it’s a step in the right direction it’s a poor effort.

    LH have had the benefit of seeing all their competitors install and launch their flat bed business product and then they come up with this.

    From the videos it doesn’t look particularly comfy for sleeping, there appears to be little privacy at all and I doubt my better half would want to play footsie with me let alone me playing footsie with a total stranger.

    Given the time it will probably take them to install it across their fleet it will be interesting to see what the competition offer by that point!

    If you are use to flying LH business class with a companion then I imagine you would be delighted with the new seat, the question is where will you need to fly in order to try it out!

  • Felixtownsend80

    Lufthansa took their time developing this product to ensure it met the expectations of their passengers, whilst also fulfilling the requirements of their crew and service personel (all of which have been regularly consulted with throughout development).

    The new Lufthansa C/CL seat certainly doesn’t compete with the likes of Singapore’s in terms of seat width or aisle access, nor does it try to. The density of a product such as Singapore’s makes it completely insufficient for Lufthansa. The airline and their designers have, however, taken the chosen layout and painstakingly developed features and details which no other airline would have the foresight / insight to offer (such as the beautifully simple seat control interface).

    As someone who has actually flown on this seat (during the test flights in 2010) I can promise you all that this seat needs to be seen to be believed. The detailing and quality is unparalleled!

    As for the proximity of your feet with your neighbour; their is a screen in that separates you from them – not a problem I can assure you! Plus, your upper bodies are much further apart than a normal seat which actually increases the sense of privacy!

    For all those looking and hoping for radical C/CL products I would say this; the time has come when Airlines need to be more intelligent when developing their cabin interiors, in order to find the right mix of efficiency and comfort. The world cannot afford for Emirites to be flying 100 A380′s around when intelligent design could have done just as good a job with 50!

    Lufthansa seem to (as usual) have found their own, well considered (albeit with some compromises) route. And I wouldn’t mind betting that history will prove it is the right one!

  • Stephan

    Well from the photos only and some info on FT I would disagree. the whole feet cubbyhole looks extremely awkward and it seems pretty likely that one would have real problems sleeping on the side with knees pointing to one’s neighbour. Nevermind having to climb over the other person and the lack of space for storing personal items. Also the whole thing looks like a dentist chair as someone else has said. One hopes the H configuration maybe better, but it looks like they missed the boat on this one. Why not just update the new LX J seat?

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