Airlineratings.com had a chance to climb aboard the third but last Emirates A380 to do a ground-test of the new premium economy product.
Emirates President, Sir Tim Clark, told Airlineratings.com in December that the 56 seats in the new premium economy cabin “are all Mercedes-lookalikes, the color schemes are rich, the side walls are rich.”
He chose German seat supplier Recaro for its history in automotive seating, and the resemblance to luxury car furnishings is more than obvious in the new Emirates A380 cabin.
Emirates had Recaro custom-design the outer appearance of the seat, and the result is spectacular: The distinct cream-colored anti-stain leather (apparently even absorbing spilled red wine without damage) creates a luxurious atmosphere, enhanced by the unique details of its stitching plus bronze trim, wood panel finishing on the side cocktail tables and on the walls surrounding the windows.
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The seats are installed at the front of the main deck cabin, eight rows in total, six with 2-4-2 abreast, in the front two rows there are just window seat pairs as 2-2 and a monument in between.
The seat comfort is equally spectacular, even for someone as tall as 1.88 meters as the reviewer, and even if the seatback in front is fully reclined with 8’’ and the footrest extended.
For a passenger that is tall, the soft calf rest provided is of no use, but the six-way adjustable headrest does a very good job. The sensation sitting on this special leather is very comfortable, the pitch of up to 40’’ in the front rows is generous. Further back in the cabin the average seat is probably just above 38’’ pitch which has become the industry standard for quality, long-haul Premium Economy Class products.
The width of 19,5’’ is generous as well, and underneath the middle arm-rest, there is a small rack to store a smartphone for example. Which can also be easily connected to the in-seat charging point, USB port, and other outlets right underneath the lower edge of the generous 13.3’’ screen, bursting with Emirates’ famed exhaustive array of offerings in their ICE entertainment system.
What’s very obvious is the new décor throughout the entire cabin, centering on the Ghaf tree, endemic to the UAE and the country’s national tree, which is found in all cabins on the new Emirates A380 plus on the walls of both staircases as well as in the Onboard Lounge and the Shower Spa, which otherwise haven’t changed.
While the First Class suites have become slightly wider and offer taller doors, although the difference is very hard to notice, Business Class now features similar champagne-colored leather covers and wood finishing as is seen on the newest Boeing 777-300ERs of the Emirates fleet dubbed “Gamechanger”.
Also, the seat covers in Economy Class have been redesigned, now featuring much more timeless and elegant dotted patterns in grey and light blue compared to floral-like patterns on earlier iterations.
One real novelty strikes the reviewers onboard almost by accident – as all of a sudden, a worker’s face fills the full frame of the tail camera feed appearing on in-seat screens, while from the outside, two cherry-pickers can be seen hovering around the empennage, as high a six-story building.
“We are currently for the first time installing HD cameras in the tail and still struggle with them slightly,” an engineer manning the cockpit readily shares. “That might be retrofitted later on other A380s.”
So Emirates will soon have four aircraft, the latest A380s, and two more next year, with this fabulous new product onboard. Where and how can passengers then fly on it?
That’s the million-dollar question, and there is no straightforward answer. As the number of aircraft fitted out is so small – and no one can predict when other aircraft might be retrofitted. Originally Recaro had mentioned it would supply 250 shipsets, and Sir Tim told Airlineratings.com in December: “It will go on all our aircraft – the 777-300s, the 777-9s, the 787s, the A350s, we have all the specifications in place.”
Now VP North and Central Europe Volker Greiner is not as committed anymore: “We have to wait and see how demand is developing and then adjust to that.” The fact is Emirates has neither created a full product offering of Premium Economy services yet nor set a pricing level or opened a specific booking class in the reservation systems.
So far it is kind of a cautious soft launch only, meaning on the routes where the few new A380s fly, top tier frequent fliers booking Economy Class are allocated to sit in the new cabin.
Currently, Emirates regularly employs the new product on flights from Dubai to London-Heathrow, Paris-CDG, Zurich, and most recently also Frankfurt, but more often than not, these aircraft just pop up rather than being firmly put onto certain specific flight numbers. So it will remain a guessing game for the time being.
