No one expects air travel to be glamorous these days but there’s one piece of encouraging news: the move towards offering flat-bed seats to business and/or first class international passengers.
Unlike lie-flat seats, which are angled, flat-bed seats recline to a full 180 degrees. The bed dimensions vary depending on the airline: Virgin Atlantic’s seat length is 79.5 inches; British Airways is 72 inches in business class and 78 inches in first-class, according to USA Today.
Beds on airplanes are hardly a new idea. In the 1930s, Pan Am’s Clippers, which took off from the water, had berths that folded down into beds. Post-World War II, the airline’s Boeing 377 Stratocruisers offered sleeper seats.
But because of deregulation and increased competition, the economics of the airline industry changed, said Dan Petree, dean of the College of Business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It became much more difficult to allocate spending space on beds over seats, he said.
“I think now we’re seeing attempts by airlines to differentiate their brands, to try to create additional value in terms of the service they provide their customers,” he said. He added:
“I think that’s one of the reasons we are seeing this tendency to pay attention to the relatively high-margin business flier.”
British Airways was the first in 1996 to put in flat-bed seats for first-class passengers.
Other airlines followed, including South African Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Air Canada, Cathay Pacific and Singapore.
US carriers are now trying to catch up.
Report by David Wilkening
