Emirates has finally decided to unveil a business class cabin, which can compete with its Middle Eastern rivals on its 777-200 LR aircraft according to a press release and tweet by the airline:
Emirates unveils a more spacious Business Class cabin on its @BoeingAirplanes 777-200LR fleet with seats in a 2-2-2 layout and a social area. The first of these newly refurbished aircraft will operate to Fort Lauderdale from 6 March 2018. https://t.co/h5EdZPmC5H pic.twitter.com/HuRW72Vrwb
— Emirates airline (@emirates) March 5, 2018
The cabin pretty much looks like a more spacious version of their new business class cabin released a few months ago. The first 777-200LR route to feature the new cabin will be Ft. Lauderdale starting March 6, 2018 followed by Santiago, Chile, a new route Emirates has just announced. This comes as a bit of surprise to me because the previous plans were to go 2-3-2 across the fleet, which was one of the most annoying business class configurations ever because a guy can easily get stuck between two strangers on a ultra long haul flight (hint: it has happened to me before). Though this will shrink the cabin to just 38 business class, which is a reduction of around 6 seats, it will be a welcome change for most. Quite frankly I don’t see why they couldn’t have done this sooner given that a lot of the cabins have been available for award bookings or flying empty out of certain N. American gateways.
It looks like they also updated the economy class cabin with the new more neutral tones and finishes, but the crowded 3-4-3 configuration remains the same. Fair enough I suppose given that this is Emirates bread and butter: offering cheap and abundant connections to South Asia.
It looks like all 10 777-200LR aircraft will be retrofitted with the new, more business class product . Frankly I’m shocked to say the least that the new 2-2-2 configuration will go into operation only 3 days from now. This is exciting stuff for Texans because the DFW flight has the potential to be eventually on one of these newly refurbished aircraft. A half hearted kudos to Emirates on trying to better compete with its counterparts across the world.
How do you feel about the new Emirates Cabin? At least the middle seat passengers get direct aisle access right?
