Seating Up

Having a new product to tout certainly has workers excited, with Qantas staff at all points of Australian Aviation’s test run more than happy to describe with great enthusiasm how much the new business class cabin was an improvement over the older Skybed MkI they were replacing.

The customer service manageron our Singapore to Melbourne flight even described VH-QPA as a “brand new A330”, which to be fair is what it must have felt like after the aircraft spent 30 days at Qantas’s Brisbane maintenance facility getting what in reality television terms was an extreme makeover.

(For the record, VH-QPA broke cover at Airbus’s Toulouse factory more than a decade ago in 2003 and operated its first revenue service for Qantas in December that year. ) Qantas head of creative development and customer experience Kylie Morris said the airline planned to have five A330 aircraft reconfigured by the end of March – two A330‑300s for international flying and three A330‑200s operating mainly between Perth and Australia’s east coast capitals.

The airline was scheduled to have 11 aircraft completed by the end of August, with the entire fleet of28 A330s to feature new business and economy cabins by the end of 2016. Although there are a couple of minor differences between the seats to be fitted on board the -200s and -300s, Qantas has the flexibility to operate either on domestic or international routes.

“We are pushing a lot of aircraft out very fast,” Morris told reporters at Sydney Airport on January 16.

The focus initially is on Singapore, Qantas’s largest port in Asia with twice-daily services from Sydney, as well as a daily flight from both Melbourne and Brisbane. All flights are operated by A330s.

Although Qantas was yet to publicly declare which Asian route would be next to receive the new business seat, Hong Kong was the favourite among aviation watchers given it was second behindSingapore in terms of capacity with daily flights from Brisbane, Melbourne and Singapore.

A recently upgraded Hong Kong lounge, much like the well-regarded Qantas lounge in Singapore, also presented good opportunities to align premium offerings on both key routes.

This included a “sleep sooner” option where passengers on overnight flights from Asia who indicate at the lounge they wished to sleep throughout the flight will have their seat placed in the reclined position and mattress already fitted prior to them boarding the aircraft.

These new business seats underwent a rigorous testing and evaluation process.

Morris said she slept on an early prototype in a cupboard next to a generator at Qantas’s Centre for Service Excellence facility in Sydney to get a sense of the feel and look of the seat.

“Sleep and comfort were our two jumping off points for the development of these seats,” Morris said.

The company also rented a house in the UK where 48 people – men and women aged between 20 and 75 and weighing between 48 and 105kg – were put through a simulated typical flight experience of either 4. 5 hours (a typical domestic flight) or 12 hours (for international flights).

Catering was provided from the pub across the road during the 700 hours of sleep and ergonomic testing.

The feedback prompted changes to features such as the size and shape of the tray table, the colours and the contouring of the cushions on the seat, Morris said.

A fresh look at Asia came after Qantas forged a global alliance with Emirates that kicked off in April 2013. As a result of the tie-up, Qantas’s flights to London made their mid-point stop at Emirates’s hub in Dubai, ending the previouspractice of transiting in Singapore.

In the year that followed, Qantas’s Asian network underwent a series of changes. Adelaide-Singapore and Perth-Singapore were dropped, while Boeing 747-400s that used to operate to the city-state were swapped for smaller A330s.

Qantas also retimed many of its departures to Asia (Tokyo an exception) to morning flights to open up a wider range of connecting options for passengers to cities in Asia it did not serve directly from Australia.

The airline has codeshare arrangements with Emirates, India’s Jet Airways, Sri Lankan Airlines and its low-cost unit Jetstar Asia, among others, in Singapore.

Similarly, it has forged codeshare partnerships with the likes of China Eastern out of Shanghai and Bangkok Airways at Suvarnabhumi Airport. Qantas also utilises its affiliation with Cathay Pacific through the oneworld alliance to offer onward options out of Hong Kong. Its low-cost franchise Jetstar Japan can offer domestic connections beyond Tokyo Narita.

Although Qantas’s Sydney-Tokyo

Sleep and comfort were our two jumping-off points for the development of these seats. KYLIE MORRIS

Narita service remains an overnight flight in both directions, given the business-heavy nature of the route, and continues to be operated, for now, with 747-400s, the airline’s Japanese services are also changing.

Qantas’s new daily Brisbane-Tokyo Narita service starting August 1 is a morning departure from the Queensland capital with A330s, while its Sydney flight will switch to the closer-in Tokyo Haneda Airport from July 31.

Qantas serves seven destinations in Asia nonstop with its own metal, and offers direct flights from Australia to 17 cities in total when codeshare flights operated by other airlines are included.

While flying into key hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong made sense – a key plank of rival Virgin’s approach to its considerably smaller international operations relies heavily on partner hubs – and the use of smaller A330 aircraft wise given it better matched capacity with demand, the product needed updating.

Although the 2001 Mark Newsondesigned Skybed manufactured by B/E Aerospace was a comfortable, lie-flat business class seat, Asianbased competitors have been a cut above with newer products.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has a 1-2-1 business class configuration on its Airbus A380s and Boeing 777-300ERs that fly to Australia, offering a fully flat bed and direct aisle access for each passenger.

Meanwhile, Cathay Pacific’s reverse herringbone business class seats from manufacturer Zodiac feature on all its flights between Hong Kong and Australia. Like those of SIA, these offer great privacy, direct aisle access, a fully flat bed and lots of storage space.

When Thompson Aero Seating and Morris’s team at Qantas set about the task of creating a new seat, they had the words of their customers ringing in their ears.

I’m really confident in the product that we are launching to Asia. KYLIE MORRIS

“Customers’ expectations around product, the life-cycle has shortened so much and I think the standard expectation is a fully flat bed,” Morris said.

“I’m so proud to say we haven’t just done a fully flat bed. We’ve actually focused on a really private business suite. We’ve then also focused on the rest of the environment and the service and the food offering to actually really deliver you a comfortable experience. ” Asked if this latest business class seat had managed to close the gap with its competitors in Asia, Morris said: “I’m really confident in the product that we are launching to Asia. From the testing we have done with our customers as well, we’ve heard . . . them say, ‘yes, I will purchase you and yes I want to sleep on that seat’. ” The upgraded A330s will also feature an upgraded inflight entertainment system (IFE), with passengers in both classes getting a Panasonic high definition touchscreen and new graphical user interface which offers what the airline describes as “interactive swiping capability”.

There will also be a number of new features, such as “My Flight” which shows passengers when meals will be served, the lights will be dimmed or cabin prepared for landing. The airline will also offer inflight shopping through the touchscreen.

Moreover, a new content partnership between Qantas and Sky News, Foxtel and Fox Sports would ensure there was something to suit every passenger.

The IFE proved somewhat glitchy during the early days of operation and some passengers found the picture quality a little iffy when the seat was fully reclined because the screen is in a fixed position.

These early teething issues were sure to be sorted out in time.

Notwithstanding how excited the crew were on Australian Aviation’s recent experience on the new business class product, further tweaking to the onboard service may still be required.

Although the airline has stressed the importance of maximising the amount of potential sleeping time on “short” overnight sectors from Asia, the two-course meal for those who wanted dinner before sleeping on the early evening departure from Singapore took a little over 90 minutes to complete. And with breakfast served about 75 minutes before landing, sleeping more than five hours may prove to be a stretch.

Meal service was a common complaint among some regular travellers on the Flying Kangaroo, according to one Qantas platinum frequent flyer who told Australian Aviation Qantas’s meal service “has always been the slowest of any airline” he flew.