Inside Cathay’s all-new Aria Suites 777 business class

Cathay Pacific’s all-new Aria Suites is business class with the lot: high-walled cocoons with sliding doors à la first class, large and lush 24-inch 4K video screens, streaming Bluetooth audio to your own noise-cancelling headphones or earbuds, wireless device charging and free WiFi.

And when the Aria Suites make their debut in the middle of this year, it will be the culmination of a seven-year journey as Cathay delivers its third-generation flatbed business class product since 2007 (with the bulk of that time has been dominated by the popular second-gen business class launched in 2011).

Seven years is an unusually long time in the gestation of a business class seat, and this long stretch has been punctuated by delays to the arrival of the Boeing 777-9 (now due into the Cathay hangars from 2025) and the global pandemic of 2020-2022.

“I started work in the early stage of the planning of the product, as early as 2017,” reflects  Vivian Lo, Cathay’s General Manager of Customer Experience & Design.

“A typical business class product development cycle for us is three, three and a half years, normally,” she tells Executive Traveller when we meet in her corner office at the airline’s Cathay City headquarters near Hong Kong airport.

Concepts were developed, workshopped, tested and refined – and then the pandemic hit.

Cathay Pacific's new 777 Aria Suites business class.

While it’s a tribute to Cathay Pacific that the airline pressed ahead with a heavy investment in the new premium cabins – a trio which includes first class and premium economy – the pandemic gave Cathay a rare opportunity to revisit and “reiterate” the design.

“We looked at what were the opportunities to improve, if possible,” Lo shares, but this second sweep merely confirmed the Aria Suites hit the target.

“Our overall approach is to really focus on customer needs and human-centric design, from research and listening to customers… before we even sketch anything, we’re thinking from the passenger’s point of view” – and it’s because of this, she feels, “our direction was still very much revalidated.”

Doors make their debut in Cathay Pacific business class.

Behind the Aria Suites name

Lo’s confidence in the Aria Suites also led to them being given that unique name – the first time Cathay has ‘branded’ its business class product.

“First and foremost, we feel this very curated experience is very much the core of our overall product direction, with a very clear kind of premium orientation,” she tells Executive Traveller.

Cathay Pacific's new 777 Aria Suites business class.

“So it's almost like showing confidence (in the product) to brand it with a proper name, so that it’s not just a generic business class.”

“And you can see a very clear, quite unequivocal difference between Aria Suite and our current business class, so the Aria Suite name is designed around this particular product.”

Cathay Pacific's Vivian Lo isn't giving anything away about the forthcoming 777 first class suites.

Lo wouldn’t be drawn on speculation that the 777-9 first class product will carry the Halo brand, in keeping with a trademark application filed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

“Halo Suites, actually we have never said anything about it… I think there’s a lot of guessing and speculation, and I think it’s fun to allow people to speculate a bit more until we announce.”

However, Cathay’s new 777-9 first class “will have its own name,” Lo said, adding that the “design languages are very coherent” between business class and first class.

“So it will likely have very kind of very harmonious, coherent design-directed naming convention.”

Aria Suites: first impressions

At first glance, apart from obvious aspects such as those high curved walls and that sliding door, the Aria Suites seem like a highly-evolved version of Cathay’s current long-standing business class.

That includes keeping most of what Cathay Pacific’s business class travellers like: such as the angled window-facing orientation, which can deliver a greater sense of personal space compared to the tighter confines of a forward-facing seat.

Cathay's benchmark second-gen 777 and A330 business class was refined for the A350.

“I  think a lot of the design features are more or less the same because they are driven by customer insights, and we validated them and they remain very, very true in terms of expectations about privacy and comfort,” Lo says.

“Also, our customers expect Cathay product to be fair and equitable, so most of the window seats are more or less the same, all the middle seats are almost the same.”

Window or middle? With the 777 Aria Suites they're all good, Cathay says.

Cathay also opted not to transform the first row of the cabin into superior ‘business plus’ berths combining additional space with everything from companion dining and even-larger video screens  to personal wardrobes.

Those are largely the choice of airlines which lack first class (Lufthansa’s Allegris being a notable exception), and Lo says the airline didn’t see the need to one-up its already impressive Aria Suites design.

Touch controls where you want them to be: Cathay Pacific's new Aria Suites 777 business class

Instead, she maintains that every seat in the 777 Aria Suites business class cabin is the best it can be, so the only choice passengers really need to make is ‘window’ or ‘middle’.

And speaking of middle seats, Aria introduces something noticeably lacking in Cathay’s current business class: a divider between the paired middle seats.

Leave it closed if you’re flying solo, or slide it open if you’re travelling with your partner or a friend.

Huzzah! A sliding privacy divider between the middle seats on Cathay Pacific's 777 Aria Suites.

Executive Traveller understands Cathay is also working on a way to have the video content of two screens play in sync, just as if you were watching the same movie or TV show while sitting together on your couch at home.

Fixed into the seating module rather than mounted on a swing-out arm, the screens can also be used on a gate-to-gate basis.

Cathay is also evolving its inflight screens to support your on-the-ground experience.

In fact, there are plenty of changes coming to those personal screens. The same streamlined user interface seen on the Airbus A350s will unlock new features and capabilities going beyond “just as screen to watch movies, to becoming a control centre of your experience.”

Mockups shown to Executive Traveller including personalised information such as the departure gate for onwards flights, real-time data on queues at Hong Kong airport’s transfer gates, and even recommendations of which Cathay Pacific lounge to use, based on the traveller’s frequent flyers status, transit time and their next flight’s departure gate.

The Aria Suites tables include a convenient tablet and phone nook.

A warmer look and feel

Evoking what Cathay describes as ‘quiet luxury’, the new Boeing 777 Aria Suites show an elegant face of gentle curves and patterned woodgrain-like surfaces.

And the cabin’s unique lightscape will play an important part in giving passengers a relaxing experience.

Thoughtful lighting is a hallmark of Cathay Pacific's new Aria Suites 777 business class.

“It has different lights that can set the tone for what you want to do,” says Elliott Koehler, Creative Director at London’s JPA Design, which partnered with Cathay Pacific on the Aria Suites.

Thoughtful lighting is a hallmark of Cathay Pacific's new Aria Suites 777 business class.

“And every storage compartment, once you open it up, a very soft glow comes on and welcomes the passenger to place their objects inside.”

Good examples of this are seen in a shoulder-height cabinet with a small mirror and room for an amenity kit, and a concealed bench-top drawer which slides open to stow your passport, phone, tablet, reading glasses, a book and so forth.

Thoughtful lighting is a hallmark of Cathay Pacific's new Aria Suites 777 business class.

“If you wake up in the middle of the night it doesn’t jar are you awake, (it’s) really keeping you very calm and relaxed throughout your whole fight.”

Cathay’s 777 Aria Suites rollout

Executive Traveller understands Cathay will formally launch its Aria Suites in July or August, when the first upgraded Boeing 777-300ER arrives in Hong Kong after an extensive refit carried out in one of the extensive China facilities of the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co (HAECO).

Lavinia Lau, Cathay’s Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, tells Executive Traveller that 30 Boeing 777-300ER jets will be upgraded at a rate of one per month, a process which will take through to mid-2027.

Towards the end of that run, Cathay’s four-class 777-300ERs will go under the knife and lose their first class cabins in the process – the Aria Suites business class cabin will extend to the front of the plane, making first class exclusive to Cathay’s Boeing 777-9 fleet and their own still-under-wraps luxury suites.

Cathay's 777-300ER jets will lose first class as part of the Aria Suites overhaul.

However, the Aria Suites – at least in their original form – might not make it onto Cathay’s A350s when it’s time for their own refit.

“That’s something we’re still determining, because we’re still taking delivery of new aircraft right now, so we're still working through the timeline,” Lo says.

“We have a very clear product lifecycle strategy where we plan for the whole lifetime of our aircraft, from acquisition (and) the first product, and when we scheduled to do the next generation of retrofitted redesigned products.”

“In terms of the next wave of retrofits for the A350, we are keeping our options open about whether we will build on (the current design) or whether it’s a new product,” Lo said, although from a design perspective she indicated there would inevitably be “more alignment with the 777-300ER and the 777-9 that will be launched next year.” 

David Flynn visited Hong Kong as a guest of Cathay Pacific.