Emirates has just announced major plans to reconfigure existing aircraft. This update is great news overall, though I also have some concerns.
Emirates installing premium economy on 777s & A380s
At the beginning of 2021, Emirates revealed its highly anticipated new premium economy cabin. This debuted on newly delivered Airbus A380s, though the catch is that Emirates only had six more A380s on order. After that, there were no concrete plans to install premium economy on more planes until the airline took delivery of Boeing 777-9s, which will only join the carrier’s fleet in 2024 at the earliest.
That plan has now changed. Emirates will be retrofitting 105 aircraft with premium economy cabins, including 53 Boeing 777s and 52 Airbus A380s. The process of reconfiguring these planes will take around 18 months, but will only start at the end of 2022 (meaning that best case scenario the project will be complete by mid-2024). Once the project is complete, Emirates will have 111 planes with premium economy.
As Emirates President Tim Clark describes the plans:
“Emirates is investing in this retrofit programme to ensure that we continue to serve our customers’ needs, and provide the best experiences in the sky. Since we introduced our Premium Economy seats a year back, we’ve received a hugely positive response. Customers have been amazed by the quality and comfort. As Emirates has done with our signature First, Business and full-service Economy travel experiences, we intend to further develop our Premium Economy into a distinctive Emirates experience that is unmatched in the industry.”
In terms of aircraft configurations, we can expect:
- Emirates 777s will have 24 premium economy seats, in a 2-4-2 configuration; this will be immediately behind business class, and five rows of economy will be removed to make this possible
- Emirates A380s will have 56 premium economy seats, in a 2-4-2 configuration; this will be at the very front of the lower deck, also replacing…