Cathay eyes new A350 business class

Cathay Pacific has two new business class seats on the runway – the Aria Suites for its flagship 777s due 2025, and a flatbed business class for its regional A330 fleet from 2026.

Now a third business class could take wing on the international Airbus A350s as part of a refit in the early planning stages.

Cathay is scoping out a mid-life refresh for its A350 business class.

“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,” explains Vivian Lo, Cathay’s General Manager of Customer Experience and Design.

And with the first A350 having arrived in 2016, the clock is slowly but inevitably ticking towards that mid-life refit – although the timeline has been muddied by pandemic-induced delays in the delivery schedule.

“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 told Executive Traveller during an exclusive interview at the airline’s Cathay City head office.

Cathay is scoping out a mid-life refresh for its A350 business class.

And as with the schedule for the 777s and A330s, these refit plans “give us a good chance to look at what are the best options available and see whether you’re building on existing and relatively new products, or whether you can bring in a new generation that can be aligned with your new and future aircraft.”

The current A350s sport a refinement of Cathay’s angled business class seat which has become the airline’s benchmark, although the halo is set to be snatched by the private 777 Aria Suites later this year.

Could the Aria Suites and the also-new 777 premium economy seat make their way onto the A350s?

“When we are looking at the retrofit, we're keeping our options open in terms of what we are going to do,” Lo says.

“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.”

The author visited Hong Kong as a guest of Cathay Pacific.