The angry inch

In Qantas’s favour, the airline has done a good job adding seatback features to its Recaro seat.

From top to bottom of the seat, the 12in inflight entertainment system cleverly pivots at its upper edge, enabling taller passengers to get a reasonable viewing angle. Qantas hasn’t plumped for a handset, though, unlike most premium 787 operators. Below the screen is a storage cubby with a USB power slot, so passengers can empty their pockets and keep their spectacles handy but safe.

The front panel that reveals the storage cubby swings down, forming a rubberised stand for a smartphone or tablet that keeps it off the tray table, and Qantas has engineered the stand so that even the largest iPad won’t get in the way of the inflight entertainment. This is smart design, and something that we haven’t seen before from Recaro’s economy class option list. The one concern I’d have is about durability, particularly given that Qantas seems likely to roster these aircraft on heavy rotation with a domestic leg tagging on to the Perth- London flight.

A bi-fold table swings out in the usual place, though feels a little small. In immediate contact with taller passengers’ knees will be the two slots of netting offering storage for the airline headphones and, perhaps, your phone or water bottle. Behind the netting is a larger, more traditional seatback pocket, which will hold the airline’s magazine. There’s also a net for passengers’ feet, similar to the A380’s foot net. Two 110V AC power sockets for the three seats round out the back of the seat.

On the front of the seatback, it’s all a deep Qantas red, with a thickly-woven fabric for the seat pan and seatback, plus leather for the headrest. It’s a standard winged headrest, though, which feels a little disappointing in the context of innovations from other airlines, like Cathay Pacific’s swing-out sleeper headrest or Etihad’s extra headrest wings.

But the winged elephant in the rebranded kangaroo is the fact that Qantas’ key competitor Virgin Australia decided against slimming down the seats on its newly refitted Boeing 777-300ER aircraft and now offers a measurably superior passenger experience to Qantas’s 787.

Virgin offers 32in of seat pitch, and a wider nine-abreast seat configuration – the same number of seats are in every row on Qantas’s 5.77m diameter 787 as on Virgin’s 6.20m diameter 787. Those 43cm, split between nine passengers with wider aisle enabling more shoulder clearance, are a real passenger experience plus. With Virgin’s bilateral alliance partner Delta offering nineabreast at 31in, there’s real elbowroom in the market for the pair to really highlight the difference on long flights.

No, Qantas isn’t the first legacy carrier airline to offer narrow nineabreast seating on the 787, nor will it be the last. The 12.5 per cent extra revenue accountancy opportunities of adding an extra seat in every row are very attractive to airlines, and indeed Japan Airlines is the only carrier to have maintained the eight-abreast seating for which the 787 was initially conceived. Yet the role of the 787-9 within Qantas’s fleet will be to offer new ultra long-haul nonstop routes, for which the airline should be able to command a price premium without installing the narrowest seats in its history.

In the comfort stakes, however, Qantas offers a relatively large proportion of premium economy seats in the standard and remarkably roomy seven-abreast configuration for the 787: 28 seats compared with the 166 in economy. Qantas may hope that this is the price premium it can command. That’s unlikely to be much comfort in the sixteenth hour of a full ultra long-haul economy flight, however. People are getting taller and wider, and they’re also more connected.

Word of mouth spreads at the speed of Facebook, and passengers have more choice than ever before. Qantas has a huge amount of brand equity, and it would be a real shame for nine-abreast economy to be the straw that broke the kangaroo’s back.

That’s unlikely to be much comfort in the sixteenth hour.