As British Airways announced the next version of its new business class seat — due to roll out on the airilne's first Airbus A350 flights between London and Madrid from July and on long-haul routes from October - it is interesting to reflect how we got here.
British Airways introduced the forerunner of Club World on its Boeing 747 flights to New York in 1977 and an updated cabin, called Super Club, across its network in 1981. You can see how things have changed by watching a BA commercial from the time here:
Club World and Club Europe were introduced in early 1988 and was a step up from Super Club, with a new, reclining "slumberseat" and better service on the ground and on-board, thanks to dedicated cabin crew. The slumberseat was not so different from what travellers in the airline's first class were experiencing and quickly won passengers over.
Over the next decade, the airline introduced arrivals lounges for Club passengers and also replace the slumberseat with the 1996 "cradle seat", which tilted as well as reclining.
Just four years later, faced with competition from other airlines, BA briefed the design agency tangerine to come up with "the holy grail of airline travel sprinkled with a bit of pixie-dust". Its answer was the famous yin-yang design flat bed seat (see below).
So what of the new seat?
The Club Suite will be introduced on the A350 when the aircraft joins BA for the first time this summer.
It will offer "direct-aisle access, a suite door for greater privacy and luxurious flat-bed seats in a 1-2-1 configuration… WiFi, 17.5 to 18.5-inch inflight entertainment screens, high definition gate-to-gate programming, and PC / USB power".
Alex Cruz, British Airways' Chairman and CEO, says: "Each new suite has direct aisle access and comes with a personal door - design features which were incorporated as a direct result of the feedback we've had from our customers. We've worked hard to ensure every aspect of the Club World experience from the lounges we've refreshed, to the new gourmet menus from Do&Co on flights from Heathrow, and the luxurious bedding we've introduced from The White Company exudes the very British style and quality customers expect from us."
The new seats will be rolled out across the network from 2020, the airline says.
While the new seat looks as though it will please loyal BA customers, perhaps a more interesting observation about the new plane's configuration comes behind Club. The A350 will have the same number of seats in World Traveller Plus, British Airways' premium economy cabin, as in Club.
BA introduced its premium economy cabin in 2000 on its relatively new Boeing 777 fleet
On the airline's planes with three classes (Club, WTP, Economy) there were half as many seats in WTP as in Club — 24 to 48. The ratio was higher in four-class planes — 13 in First, 48 in Club, 40 in WTP and 127 in Economy.
However, the new BA A350 will be the first time that WTP has been present in equal number.
It shows the remarkable success of the fourth cabin — an idea that was not universally welcomed when it was first introduced — and is a proxy for what has happened to travel policies and budgets in the intervening 19 years.
Most telling of all the new WTP seat looks not too much different from the Super Club seat of the 1980s albeit without the hi-tech in-flight entertainment Oh and a contemporary blue rather than the orange-brown of the earlier era.
