Ah, the many, many existential problems of the airline industry post-pandemic. Over the weekend, news came in that Swiss International Air Lines (aka SWISS) is being forced to retrofit many of their aircraft as part of the process of modernizing their fleet. In this day and age, you’d hope that all this effort would be in the name of greater economy and you’d be absolutely right.
Unfortunately, however, we’re talking yet again about the bottom-line kind of economy and not the environmental kind …
The driving problem, you see, is that the first-class cabins on most of SWISS’s planes are sooooo turn of the millennium and therefore not up to the discerning standards of today’s first-class passengers with their first-world problems. Not enough privacy it would appear. It’s bad enough seeing your fellow passengers at the gate (you know, that annoying, crowded part of the airport between the first-class lounge and the plane?), but does it have to be on the plane too?
Therefore, as part of a “much needed revamp”, the new SWISS Senses design (actual tagline: “Experience SWISS with all your senses”) is offering its first-class passengers new suites (yes, suites) in two configurations depending on whether they want a window seat or not. Those opting for the view will have to make do with only 2.4 m2, whereas those sharing the one in the centre of the plane could run laps around the queen-sized bed (3.1 m2) that would fit comfortably inside their 3.5-m2 enclave.
There’s a slight catch, however …
In combination with the ever lighter lawn chairs being provided in economy these days, these new suites are apparently going to be so heavy that they’ll be throwing the balance of the planes off and making their noses pitch downward. And this is especially problematic in SWISS’s Airbus 330s, an airplane model that tends to be a little nose-heavy from the get-go. (But not in their Boeing 777s. First good news for Boeing in a long time …) The solution? Better seats in economy? C’mon, get serious. Nah, just a second nifty, gas-guzzling, rain forest-killing retrofit in the A330s in the form of some lead plates in the back of the planes to prevent those embarrassing face plants while taxiing.
Sorry, but I just don’t get it …
… starting with all this being for the benefit of at most four passengers per flight.
How much privacy does anyone need on a commercial flight anyway? Even those flying first class? Now, I’ve flown long-haul business class exactly once in my life and I found it to be incredibly roomy and pretty private despite being shielded by only (gasp) half-high walls. (Of course, this is coming from someone used to too many inflight hours of smelling all my seat neighbours and what they had for dinner the night before. Maybe not the kind of experience SWISS Senses is after, but hey, they did say all my senses.) If you need more privacy than that, then maybe consider buying your own plane?
Also, don’t rich people have friends or partners? Economy might be a little overly familiar most of the time, but business and first class seem a little overly sterile sometimes. If the half-high walls of business class aren’t more that enough to isolate you from your partner, the outer first-class suites effectively put you in an isolation tank. For all that space, there is still only one seat in those suites for exactly one bum. And what do you do if some other rich person booked just a single in that shared centre suite? Sacrifice your privacy? Or, in the case that you do have a partner, book just them into business class instead?
More importantly, just how much do these bloody suites weigh? (Short answer: they don’t know exactly yet!)
To save lead, SWISS has actually cut back the number of first-class suites from the eight the A330s had before to just four. (For reference, the old, inferior suites were a mere 205 kg each. Now there’s half as many and they still have to compensate for the added weight?) And, on top of that, they also did away with plans for sliding doors for those comparative cost-cutters in the business-class seats (yes, seats, not suites).
One thing that they did not do, however, was to move the suites closer to the middle of the plane, which was my wife’s immediate suggestion. It’s actually a fair point. Where exactly is it written down that the seats have to get exponentially more expensive the further away from the tail you are? And once the first-class passengers are encased in their little privacy suites, they won’t know where they are on the plane anyway. (Or, in the case of that centre suite, probably that they even are on a plane.)
Fortunately, SWISS also decided against cramming even more deadbeat deadweight (aka passengers) into economy. (Not that it’s physically not possible. Just some other little Swiss thing in the form of the Geneva Convention probably getting in the way.) Now, for some unknown reason, SWISS doesn’t seem to provide any readily available information regarding the legroom in economy other than to describe it as “generous”. However, this article puts it at about 81 cm, which combined with a seat width of 50 cm (which SWISS does provide) works out to your own personal economy suite of about 0.4 m2. Or, put another way, about 5.2 economy suites to compensate for the average of each first-class one. Or, put another, another way, 159 economy-class passengers aren’t enough to already balance out the weight of the new suites for just four people?
And, as I wrote not even a few short weeks ago, if the airlines are routinely assigning us our seats according to weight and balance considerations anyway, where’s the problem? Put all the families with small kids closer to the front (sort of like an excruciating, inflight kindergarten) and all the, ahem, larger individuals and heavy-duty, duty-free shoppers at the back and you’re good to go.
Finally, there’s the maths: fewer first-class passengers, heavier planes, the retrofitting costs, and it all still makes economic sense somehow …
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