Name: Why Airlines Demand For First-Class Seats Delayed Boeing, Airbus Production
Uploaded: 2025-03-30T06:23:45.000Z
Duration: 4 min 45 s
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Airlines are going all in on big spenders.

That means outfitting their planes with first and business class pods and suites that are more luxurious than ever.

Think heated and cooled seats, ultra high definition screens, and perhaps the most popular innovation, a privacy door.

But the elaborate new cabins that airlines are using to win over big spenders are now holding up deliveries of new aircraft themselves.

With some aircraft from Boeing and Airbus waiting on the ground until regulators sign off.

Now Boarding, Why first-class seats are delaying new aircraft.

Airlines around the world from Delta to Lufthansa to Singapore Airlines, Quantas and JetBlue are racing to add the most luxurious seats possible to their jets.

Premium revenue performance outpaced main cabin throughout the year, up 8% over prior year with positive unit revenues in all four quarters of 24.

We expect to increase capacity 3 to 4% in 2025 with more than 85% of incremental seats in premium cabins.

But getting the seats certified by regulators is taking months, holding up delivery of new airplanes.

That's adding to years of problems like supply and labor shortages after the pandemic hit the industry.

Most prominent among the ongoing challenges in our industry is the shortfall of by now 41 Boeing long haul aircraft which were originally supposed to be operating already in the year of 24.

Of these aircraft, 15 787s are still awaiting certification for the seats in Charleston, South Carolina.

Regulators have to determine whether the new seats are safe to fly commercially before they're used on passenger flights.

Seats continue to be a problem and it's not actually the production of the seats.

It's getting the seats certified and it's not actually the butt part of the seat, it's the cabinet and the doors and the, you know, for first class and business class.

These are pretty complex systems and getting those certified is taking.

Both the seat suppliers and us longer than anticipated, so if you were in Charleston, you'd see we've got, you know, completed airplanes that are held up for delivery.

Go in pretty late in the assembly process.

When it comes to interiors and what we have experienced so far, we have delays in seats that is delaying the time at which we can deliver a plane fully completed and and deliver it on time.

The bottlenecks are bad news not just for airplane makers, but for airlines trying to grow profits.

Premium passenger revenues increased 10% year over year and premium cabin unit revenues were positive.

Both trends that persisted throughout the year.

We see no change in consumer behavior seeking out increased premium experiences.

Installing fancier first class and business class seats.

Margins are thin across airlines, last year the profit margins of global airlines were about 3%.

Customers that are less price sensitive, especially during a period of prolonged inflation, have become more important to airlines.

So airlines have poured billions of dollars into revamping their cabins where those customers sit.

While airlines used to give away more of the front of the plane to frequent travelers through upgrades, many flyers have shown they're willing to pay up to sit in a premium seat.

Fair differences can be vast, a round trip ticket between New York and Munich in Lufthansa's business class, not even the most flexible fair is going for about $10,000 in the first week of May.

About 10 times the price of a standard economy ticket.

Those seats are elaborate, some have sliding doors for privacy, big screens and other electronics, and they convert into full length beds.

Each business class seat can have about 1500 parts and they weigh about 175 pounds.

They're so heavy that they change the center of gravity on some Airbus planes operated by Swiss.

And they're still waiting for approval, the seats can run in the low six digits, about the price of a luxury car.

Not having these seats flying on time is adding to the industry's problem of having loads of customers and not enough planes to fly them.

For premium, we think that that's going to continue to grow and we're skating to where the puck is going to be and on that front over the next two years, we're going to grow our premium seating by 20%.

Getting the state of the art seats installed at the front of the cabin means millions of dollars in revenue for airlines.