Sky Lounge: Emirates New Premium Economy Cabin Release

Aircraft and Innovation
Ahmed El Dahan
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6
min read
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November 23, 2021

Straying away from the traditional first business and economy classes; premium economy, also known as elite or economy plus, seats travellers between coach and business class adding a little more comfort and amenities with an added cost. First appearing in the early 90s it has yet to become an industry standard being offered by some airlines such as Singapore and United. 

Emirates has revealed that they will begin officially offering premium economy to travelers by next year. President of Emirates, Sir Tim Clark, announced that the airline will be integrating a lavish economy cabin starting from June of 2022. They will be fitted on six A380s and aimed primarily on its longest routes such as between London and Sydney.

In what can be described as a soft opening, the airline had already installed some premium economy seats, albeit not being independently bookable, they were offered instead to lucky flyers that had chosen the right seats on the right plane.

In an interview with Simple Flying the president expressed “We will actually put premium economy on the market in June next year. By that time, we will have six A380s, and we’re planning and working out where exactly we’re going to fly them. Obviously, it comes into its own on the long range missions.”

He went on to express the reasons that Emirates have been thoroughly assessing the time delay to fully apply the new aircraft to their fleet, “The critical path in the timeline of this is information technology. There is a huge IT requirement in terms of the reservation systems, the departure control systems, the customer facing systems … once you introduce something like that, it causes an iterative change out in all sorts of things. So IT have been busy building the coding to make all those systems interact.”

The moment these logistics are covered, Emirates will be set to market the new cabin to its clients, although the airline is yet to state the pricing of the new cabin.

In terms of its new features, Emirates premium economy comes with fully adjustable head and leg rests along with an advanced tray table set up. The cabin's aesthetics are also more luxurious with beige leather seats complemented by a wood textured interior pattern. Clark noted that the design has been highly praised “There has been an extraordinary level of interest in it. And many people have said they’ve never seen any premium economy like it. We are very happy to say that we have ‘done an Emirates’ on it.” Emirates further announced that they intend to apply the new premium economy cabin to more of its A380s and 777 jets.

At Eways Aviation we highly anticipate the increasing prevalence of premium economy that will break the traditional three class system used for decades and make comfortable flying more accessible to larger numbers of travellers.


BY
Ahmed El Dahan
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Aviation Journalist
A seasoned writer, Ahmed El Dahan was trained in Journalism and Mass Communication in the American University in Cairo. He then moved on to refine his writing skills working in various publications covering such topics as tourism, art exhibitions, music along with being a food critic. Relocating to Paris in 2015, he has an ever growing curiosity for the aviation industry. Away from the page, Dahan is an active professional saxophonist.

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