UPDATE: Delta Air Lines has officially confirmed it will not wait much longer for the Safran Vue seat. While it still prefers this seat for its premium subfleet of Airbus A321neo aircraft, it is now open to the Thompson Aero VantageSOLO seat. Ranjan Goswami, Delta’s Chief Marketing and Product Officer, told Bloomberg that Delta would purchase whatever seat can be approved by safety regulators first. The news was first broken by JonNYC.
My original story is below.
Delta Air Lines may reportedly abandon a new business class seat for its Airbus A321neo fleet after years of certification delays, a painful recognition that no matter how premium a seat looks on paper or even mocked up, it cannot fly if regulators will not approve it.
Delta May Ditch New Business Class Seat After Certification Problems
Delta Air Lines has been trying to introduce a new lie-flat business class seat on some Airbus A321neo aircraft, as part of its next-generation premium narrowbody fleet plan, but that plan may now be in serious trouble…at least for the product Delta has spent years designing, based on the Safran Vue platform, as a competitive advantage over American Airlines and United Airlines.
JonNYC suggests that Delta may abandon its planned new A321neo business class seat after persistent certification issues. That would be a major setback, because these aircraft were supposed to feature a premium product for use on transcontinental flights that Delta had spent years working on.
It has already been a strange ride. Delta reportedly took delivery of an A321neo configured with the new cabin in 2024, but the aircraft then sat in storage while certification issues dragged on. Eventually, Delta decided to install a temporary cabin with an unusually large number of domestic first class seats so the aircraft could actually enter service (44 seats!).
Now, per JonNYC, Delta may be moving away from the original seat entirely.
That is quite a dilemma.
Certification Problems Are Becoming A Huge Industry Headache
This is not a problem unique to Delta. Across the industry, airlines have become far more ambitious with premium cabin seating, chasing the money and post-pandemic demand for premium travel. New seats with the latest bells and whistles look flashy in press releases and renderings, but those seats still have to be certified.
And that has been a recurring problem, with Lufthansa Allegris being perhaps the prime example, but many others including seats designed for American and United. One Mile at a Time makes a fair point: there seems to be a huge communication disconnect between seat manufacturers and the regulators that ultimately certify these products.
That seems to be a very expensive communication gap that costs not only seat manufacturers, but airlines and ultimately passengers, like the Delta passengers who are still waiting for narrow body replacement for the 757-200.
Delta’s Problem Is Especially Awkward
I’m not going to attack Delta because I think, overall, the carrier has done a masterful job of marketing itself and despite recent operational slip-ups, continues to broadly deliver. Still, this is awkward for Delta because the airline has built so much of its brand around premium travel.
If it wants passengers to pay more for its premium product, it should have a leading hard product (not just leading service or leading lounges).
Delta’s lie-flat business class fleet is already inconsistent. Some aircraft have excellent Delta One Suites while others have older products that are far less competitive. If Delta cannot get a new premium narrowbody business class seat certified, that creates yet another mismatch between the brand promise and the actual passenger experience….the 2-2 on the 757-200 or the coffin-like sets not the 767-300 are not ideal, nor is the 44-seat A321neo “temporary” business class configuration.
The A321neo should be a very useful aircraft for Delta: it can serve premium domestic and even international markets with strong economics. But a proper lie-flat product would make it even more useful.
If Delta winds up with an off-the-shelf Thompson Vantage Solo product like JetBlue has on its A321neos, it will have lost years for zero competitive advantage.
CONCLUSION
Delta may reportedly abandon its planned new A321neo business class seat after years of certification problems. If that happens, it will be another example of the profound disconnect between seat design and certification.
This is not something I blame Delta for. Seat manufacturers and regulators appear to be badly out of sync, and airlines are paying the price for products that look great on paper but cannot be certified on time.
But Delta still has a problem. If you want customers to pay a premium, the hard product has to support the premium image. A Thompson Vantage Solo will do the job just fine on the A321neo, but it will be a product that fails to distinguish Delta from its peers.
image: Safran
Just go with whatever B6, AA, UA, AC are doing, stop delaying, no recliners where lie-flat should be.
First Delta’s satellite internet prospects blew up in a mushroom cloud on the launch pad, now this. Rough few days for delta. If this keeps going, United is going to have to aquire them to save them from ruins
Technically, Amazon Leo doesn’t completely rely on New Glenn(the rocket that blew up), as it recently had a launch on ULA’s Atlas V rocket and has had multiple launches on SpaceX’s(and Elon’s) Falcon 9. Quite interesting how they were so desperate for launches after New Glenn delays that they went to their biggest competitor for help.
Not exclusively using New Glenn (and also using Atlas, Falcon 9, and others) was always the plan. New Glenn was to lift about 25% of the LEO satellites to bring the constellation up to about 3000 – enough for Beta.
Losing New Glenn for a while will definitely delay LEO’s plans, but it isn’t as bad as one might think.
Unless you were counting on meeting the Artemis IV deadline to land on the moon in 2028, for Trump. All the big rockets having really big bavovnas has made that increasingly unlikely (at this point, with no functional Starship on the horizon, it seems pretty much a fantasy).
It’s gonna be some rough sledding for NASA between now and then, especially when the mango Mussolini has his own blow-up when he figures out any moon landing will be after he’s turfed out. He’s so delusional though that he probably won’t notice.
the seats and mock ups look really great. Too bad they can’t get across the finish line.
UA is too inferior and mediocre to take any sort of meaningful advantage of any mishaps DL may have
Unlike AA, B6 and UA, DL never intended to operate its premium configured 321NEOs on international routes and, given how poorly the AA 321XLR product has been received, if DL ends up with the same product as B6, it will still be significantly ahead of AA and UA.
Narrowbodies always will be inferior for international use. DL had the smallest number of premium 321s in its fleet plan of the big 3.
DL could have had a slight advantage but might end up just at parity.
and Billy Bob,
DL has working WIFI on 90% of its fleet; UA doesn’t have Starlink on 90% of its mainline fleet.
DL will add the 717s and Viasat is adding 2 new satellites this year.
Get back w/ us by the end of the year and let us know the number of passengers that have defected from DL to UA because of internet or lie flat business class narrowbody seats.
I can go out on a not very long limb and say the number will be somewhere between -1 and 1.
Congrats on phasing out the 717s… (oh, wait, nevermind).
DL’s 717s are younger than AA’s A320s and have far more passenger space than the 50 passenger regional jets that AA and UA fly
When is the last time you sat in one of those 717s? The last one I was on, the cabin felt indistinguishable from the last DC-9 I was on in 2010, and the wifi worked just as well (which means it was non-existant)
the 717 seats are no different from any other narrowbody; overhead bins are smaller.
and Hughes WiFi will be added in the fall.
DL will have 100% high speed WiFi on its fleet long before AA or UA and more WiFI equipped aircraft than any other airline in the world.
Wait.
they already do
Neither Hughes or Viasat is high speed wifi. Sorry.
What i mean is the cabin was dimly lit and very dirty. That plus No wifi and no screens makes it worse than anything in united’s fleet
Although passenger experiences may vary, DL’s B717s offer significantly more passenger space, a wider cabin, and a mainline aircraft feel compared to the cramped 50-passenger regional jets frequently flown by AA and UA. Let’s remember that DL is in the process of equipping its B717s with fast, free Delta Sync Wi-Fi. However, because the fleet is undergoing a major system upgrade, the experience varies. While the goal is to have the retrofits finalized, many B717s may currently experience inconsistent connectivity or lack of Wi-Fi during the transition.
At least DL ditched its Mad Dog…
Let’s add that DL’s B717s are not younger than AA’s A320s; both fleets are roughly the same age, with DL’s B717s holding a marginally younger average. Let’s compare the fleets’ stats below:
* DL B717s: Average age of 24.5 to 24.7 years.
* AA A320s: Average age of 24.5 to 24.8 years.
While both fleets are nearing a quarter-century in age, DL plans to keep its B717s flying until the late 2020s to early 2030s.
United has retired 63 of it’s 319/320 aircraft, or about 1/3rd, as it takes on 321NEOs (69 to date). With 33 more deliveries, it’s logical to assume more of the oldest 320CEO series will leave the fleet.
Delta is currently flying 717’s that are up to 27 years old, and hasn’t significantly retired eight in 2020, six in 2023, and two in 2024. There have been zero retired in the last 26 months.
(Here’s how you do this part… Source: Planespotters dot net and the fleet details of each airline)
Just because a few of United’s A320 airframes are a little older than Delta’s (30 years vs 27) doesn’t mean Delta’s are not old, too. And it appears United has a plan – what is Delta’s for the small, NB market? Pending orders for the A220 are zero, according to planespotters (<<< again, that's how you do that part about claims made on line).
the fixation with fleet age is something only a few disconnected avgeeks do.
If UA cared about fleet age, they wouldn’t have the oldest fleet and certainly not the oldest widebody fleet.
Unlike UA, DL is retiring older widebody aircraft. UA suffers from a severe case of FOMO so clings to old widebodies that can’t even fly because of parts shortages.
What does matter is aircraft efficiency and DL handedly leads the big 3 in that regard. Part of the reason is because of DL’s much lower reliance on regional jets which are no longer cheap capacity; a large portion of DL’s RJs are used for point to point traffic including at NYC, BOS where RJ costs are much easier to absorb than on connecting itineraries.
UA’s fleet efficiency including its regional partners is the worst in the US airline industry. Only someone that is fixated on tiny pieces of revenue would ignore the ultra-high cost of operating 42-50 seat regional jets esp. given the airport constraints at UA hubs.
DL’s 717s are competitive wiht AA and UA regional jets, none of which AVOD and typically serve 2 hour segments. Despite its high fuel burn compared to the A220, the 717 is far more efficient, including labor costs than any RJ in the US carrier fleet.
there are a whole bunch of reasons why UA’s profits are so much lower than DL’s and part is fleet strategies.
and, specific to the lie flat seat issue, I continue to be amazed at how much AA and UA fans love to sweep under the rug any discussions about how delays and groundings of the MAX and 787 have impacted those two airlines.
IN the world of supply chain issues, DL is far better off than just about any other US airline and it has nothing to do with age of any fleet
Tim can you explain why the B6 (Thomson vantage solo) seat is better than the Altitude for United and Aurora for American? Or is this just another one of your inaccurate “facts”
TD: * (Pivots comments to point out competitor’s fleets are older than Delta’s)
Anyone: * (points out that competitors are actively retiring older planes, while Delta isn’t retiring some of it’s oldest ones)
TD: * (Dismisses Delta keeping old planes by saying, Quote: “the fixation with fleet age is something only a few disconnected avgeeks do.”)
Can’t make this stuff up.
Andy,
the pure known data on UA’s seat vs. B6′ is fairly readily available.
and Paul,
I specifically noted that fleet age is not near as much of an efficiency – but also note that keeping planes in the air is far more important than holding onto them
DL doesn’t retire airplanes just due to age and I wouldn’t expect UA to either. Both SHOULD retire them because they are economically obsolete or can no longer support the customer service proposition.
again, DL is retiring 763s while UA has yet to officially retire even its grounded fleet of 777-200s which have an inferior widebody product.
keep arguing if it makes you feel better. DL has simply managed its fleet – current and future – better. DL doesn’t need to pay regional carriers to fly aged reconfigured RJs or keep aged widebodies in service.
and UA is about ready to get hit w/ a huge amount of debt as Boeing suddenly starts delivering not only all of the aircraft it hasn’t delivered in the past 5 years but also the aircraft that UA is contracted to get – which will certainly increase UA’s debt as cash flow falls – on top of all of the terminal projects that Kirby started and which will have to be used even as fuel prices remain high.
and the real fleet differentiation is that DL is an MRO partner with Rolls Royce, GE and Pratt and Whitney while UA has no such relationship with anyone and publicly trashes Rolls Royce – as if that strategy has allowed Kirby to get what he wants w/ anyone else.
and those RR engines that Kirby wants will power the most efficient and capable TPAC fleet – and that will have a far more significant long-term outcome on the industry and DL and UA than any one year advantage that AA and UA might have – and might not in domestic narrowbody business class seats since DL doesn’t even intend to enter the international narrowbody market
Why is certifying a seat such a problem? Are there safety issues? The article doesn’t answer that. Perhaps it’s worth a separate article.
Remember that the FAA has increasingly rigorous safety protocols for high-walled luxury suites. The Safran Vue design has repeatedly struggled to pass egress, evacuation, and dynamic crash testing requirements. Regulators also point out that seating manufacturers often design premium seating concepts without involving the FAA early enough in the design pipeline, resulting in massive, late-stage certification bottlenecks.
Honestly, all they need to do is write a 7-figure check to Trump, the regulation is waived, problem solved. This is the way now.
In this case, it would be better for DL to entirely abandon the Safran Vue seat rather than fighting for certification through 2028. Let’s not forget that, due to Airbus deliveries without certified interiors, brand-new A321neos remain grounded in storage for well over a year, draining millions in potential revenue.
kinda like all of the airlines that have waited far longer for Boeing to certify the MAX than DL will wait for new narrowbody business class seats
or all of the production delays and issues on the 787
or the huge number of aircraft with Geared Turbofan engines that have been grounded
or UA’s fleet of 777-200s for which UA can’t get engine parts…
it’s called supply chain issues and DL has navigated them better than just about any of their peers.
Or the delays on the 779…
For a colossal company like DL, every choice is also a relinquishment.
Ahh, free at last… free at last…
It’s a universal truth that accepting the need to turn the page (sometimes even to start a new book) in the face of disappointment or a life change is a painful but normal step.
Despite everything, this mandatory change preserves DL’s goal of offering direct aisle access and lie-flat comfort without further delaying aircraft entry into service.