Aer Lingus will have some of the best business class seating in Europe when it reintroduces the premium cabin from late 2019. Featuring lie-flat seats, passengers are sure to enjoy the enhanced experience.
Business class seats within Europe are almost always the same seat as economy class. The differentiation being the middle seat is kept free and you receive a decent meal and drinks service throughout the day. What will Aer Lingus’ business class look like?
Aer Lingus Business Class Seat
Brand new long range Airbus A321neo aircraft are due to arrive at Aer Lingus in 2019. These will be used on routes between Ireland and the east coast of the United States and Canada. They will seat 16 business and 170 economy passengers.
Once they arrive in Ireland in the early morning, they will then be deployed on a European rotation before being sent back across the Atlantic. They will have the lie flat international style seats pictured above.
Will Business Class Be On The Entire Network?
Business class is coming back at Aer Lingus mainly because passengers in that cabin connecting over Dublin were unhappy with being put into economy class on their European sector.
Named destinations so far are London, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona and there could be others. It should be possible to purchase seats in the new cabin even if you’re not connecting to or from a transatlantic sector.
On Board Service
As reported by the Irish Times, the Aer Lingus CEO states, “We are not going to be reintroducing bespoke catering. It will be the same as you buy on board, it will just be complimentary.”
An example of the buy on board menu is above and you can see the full menu here. Quality of the food is usually very good, so there should be no problems there.
Overall Thoughts
I wonder how many seats will be sold for onward connections versus how many are purchased outright. The pricing of the point to point services will certainly be interesting.
Considering the entire aircraft will have seat back screens throughout, hopefully the entertainment system will remain active as well. It will add an extra dimension for both classes.
What do you think of this Aer Lingus move? Should they have it just on the key routes or roll it out network wide? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Images via Aer Lingus.
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From an operational viewpoint it’s silly. Schedule integrity ? Consider that in the past week alone both AMS / DUB disrupted by bad weather. You wouldn’t find other European 6th freedom carriers doing this.
I disagree with you. It will utilise the A321neos during the day in between transatlantic flights, maximising the use of the assets, which is quite smart. The places they will go is dictated by the connecting flows, which they already have data on. Even if the cabin is not sold on the web site (which it is probably going to be) and is just used for the connecting passengers, it will still be a very smart move as it provides a better end to end experience for the transatlantic business class passenger.
TBH assuming this scheduling does start (and we don’t currently do not know) then the issue is the risk of delays caused by bad weather, ATC issues, strikes etc etc. Just think back at the Schiphol situation some eight days ago. The DUB-AMS flight might have made it on time but it is now delayed at Schiphol. So does EI then delay the more lucrative transatlantic flight ex-DUB ? Does it have a substitute long-haul aircraft available in DUB ? Schedule integrity comes first … if that wasn’t the case then why haven’t BA/KL/LH/LX (all successful sixth-freedom carriers) done likewise… Read more »
Presumably the transatlantic schedule will be protected. In the event of the inbound arriving late into Dublin, and needing to go back across the Atlantic, the connecting passengers would be put onto the standard services with no business class. As the named destinations all have multiple services per day, I don’t believe this is going to be any kind of problem. I hear what you’re saying, but you’re making the assumption that Aer Lingus won’t have contingency plans, but they will.