The art of business

Having direct aisle access is the aspirational standard for travellers and will increasingly become a wider requirement, particularly on the long haul. Fourteen hour flights to the Middle East or the US are much more bearable when your rest is not disturbed by a neighbour. It’s all about avoiding the midnight clamber, where a window or middle seat passenger needs to vault like an Olympic gymnast (or Olympic wrestler, depending) over the person in the aisle seat.

Yet direct aisle access comes with revenue implications for airlines and ticket costs for passengers. It’s a careful balancing act between comfort, brand positioning, passenger choice and the bottom line – revenue.

Internationally, Qantas’s Marc Newson-designed Skybed has been eclipsed by the competition. While the second-generation model goes fully flat, the lack of direct aisle access – and middle seats on its 747 fleet – is a drawback.

Similarly, Virgin Australia’s off-the-shelf 777-300ER business class is just fully flat. No direct aisle access here either.

Other airlines come off better: Cathay Pacific has offered direct aisle access since its previous business class was introduced, even if the high walls of “coffin class” were less popular than its newer, much-vaunted take on the Sicma Aero Cirrus.

Even the off-the-shelf model of the Sicma product, as seen first on US Airways, later on Delta’s 747 fleet and soon to appear on Air France as well as Delta’s A330 aircraft, wins passenger plaudits.

The reverse herringbone layout – where feet point towards windows or the aircraft centreline – seems to have satisfied passengers who disliked facing into the aisles on previous herringbone configurations, as seen on Australian flights with Delta, Air Canada and Virgin Atlantic.

Sogerma’s staggered Solstys product, where window passengers are offset from their aisle neighbours with a small gangway for access, is another top-rung seat. A customised version is found onboard Emirates’ A380s, with standard models on Etihad’s Australian flights, Alitalia long-haul and Thai’s A380s.

Singapore Airlines’ new business class is due to debut this month, replacing the enormously wide seats that fold over forwards rather than reclining flat. Yet SQ’s real passenger experience problem is not its old seat, but the fact that it cross-sells that seat against older and regional angled lie- flat seating, without price differentiation.

For airlines with diverse routes, things are admittedly complex. Virgin Atlantic’s fold-over beds in Upper Class are praised for overnight sleeping comfort and the benefits of direct aisle access, yet even on its newest Dream Suite product the recline for day flights isn’t as good as the competition.

Virgin’s main competitor British Airways has a counterpoint to the rise of direct aisle access: it’s planning to equip its new A380 and 787 aircraft with its existing unique yin-yang seating, where aisle passengers face forwards and window/middle passengers face backwards.

BA’s is among the most dense fully flat business class seating options: an unusual eight-across 2-4-2 layout, exceeded only by United’s narrower 2-4-2 layout. But the broader section by the shoulders and narrower section by the feet makes it comfortable, the ‘La-Z-Boy’ style footrest is good for day flights and frequent flyers know how to snag one of the top eight seats on a 747.

But density gives BA an advantage. As an example, Alitalia and British Airways both operate the 777-200ER with business class between doors 1 and 2. Even with allowances for cabin monuments like galleys and lavatories, BA squeezes in 32 seats where Alitalia has 20, giving BA an advantage of around 35 per cent in space utilisation.

Could British Airways remove a row of seating, redistribute the space into individual gangways and still come out ahead? Probably. Yet it has no compelling reason to do so: with opaque pricing and less price-sensitivity in business class – let alone airlines’ internal inconsistencies within fleets, sub-fleets and even on the same aircraft – fares do not reflect seat density, let alone the quality of a particular seat.

There’s an argument to be made for consistency of expectation too: Lufthansa’s old angled lie-flat business class seat was roundly pilloried, yet pricing was keen and the product was consistent: if you fly LH longhaul that’s what you got and it certainly wasn’t going to cannibalise first class bookings on anything but the shortest day flights.

Business class travellers will be left with the problem – however nice a problem it is to have – of choosing between wildly different products sold by airlines that have an interest in not telling travellers precisely what they’ll get.

Yet direct aisle access comes with revenue implications for airlines and ticket costs for passengers.