BA gets wider

The Times reports that British Airways is “inching forward” towards a more comfortable cabin in its Economy class offering on the new Boeing 787-9 fleet.  (See Aircraft cabin widths in this issue)

BA seems to have a habit in recent times of getting its passenger seat offerings wrong, the latest 747 layout described by one customer as “a muddle” whilst it is the only airline to offer Business Class on both decks of its A380s.

According to the piece by Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent, the current 787-8’s seats are only 16.8” wide in the rear cabins, but when the long range 787-9s arrive a new seat design allows for 17.3” and an increased seat pitch to 32”.  The airline will stick to the generally accepted 3+3+3 layout but will reduce the aisle width.”  BA says eventually the 8 series aircraft will be upgraded too.

Norwegian on its new ‘low-cost’ Boeing Dreamliners has an Economy cabin seat width of 17.2”, much the same as BA.  Generally speaking the seat pitch on long range widebodies start at 31” whilst with single aisle aircraft they can be as low as 29”.  www.ba.com

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OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum

David Pryke,

Come on guys, stop being dinosaurs. Please use the metric system. I am probably older than most readers yet I was brought up with this in the 1970s. 95%+ of the world manages to.

André Orban, Belgique

Still a far cry from the 18" on Airbus aircraft. The 787 is really a plane to avoid in Economy!

Janet Walford, England

BA is way behind other airlines when it comes to their seats. Their biz class seats have been around for 15 years and are among the absolute worst now available. I was appalled to see that, in their brand new 380, they still went for the same old seat design, which is a real shame and very short sighted. We now try to travel with anyone else but BA on biz class flights because of their biz seats.