Beleaguered South African Airways is taking delivery of five new A330-300 aircraft which will feature a refreshed business class cabin and new lie-flat seat. Check out the impressive pictures below.
The A330-300 will feature Thompson Aero Vantage XL seats, similar to those on SAS and regional competitor RwandAir. Priestmangoode, the highly-resepcted design firm, partnered with South African Airways to refresh the entire business class cabin.
Business class will offer 46 seats in a staggered 1-2-1 configuration. That means unlike the current generation South African business class seat, all business passengers will have direct aisle access. The seats also include ample personal storage space.
No Upgrade To Other Aircraft
Australian Business Traveler reports that SA’s A332 and A340 aircraft will not be retrofitted. The A332 is aging and the A340 is again and gas guzzling so this is not a surprise, though there are no plans (or funds) to retire these aircraft.
I flew in South African’s current A330-200 business class seat from Johannesburg to Munich and slept very well. Keeping the existing seats, while no longer cutting edge, is not a huge drawback.
CONCLUSION
The refreshed business class cabin on South African looks stunning. Hopefully the more fuel efficient A330s and renewed business class experience will lead the carrier toward solvency and profit.
What’s in that image second from the bottom? It looks like an ottoman, but in all the other images, there’s no such ottoman or literature pocket. It looks like LH’s F ottoman, but SAA doesn’t have F. Is it just the bulkhead ottoman?
Do we know what routes these will be on?
Working on it. Don’t know yet by I’d guess IAD, LHR, JFK.
IAD would be great! Currently planning another trip to SA out of DC area for summer 2018. I have really enjoyed the posts on Africa by the way, really getting me excited to go back!
Matt,
Do you really think they’d be able to pull off JKF or IAD with these? Their max range is 8,357 miles, with IAD clocking in at 8134 and JFK 7969. Unless of course they do you a stopover in ADD?
IAD-JNB route already has this plane (started last Thurs). It’s already scheduled for four routes; JFK isn’t one of them. One Mile at a Time did an article on the four routes in Sept of last year: http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/09/14/saa-a330-new-business-class/
They’ve got them scheduled to/from GRU already.
Sexy?
Brown is beautiful! 😉
Hideous colour scheme straight from the 80s. Reminds me of the recent Grand Tour episode when all Richard and James could say of Clarkson’s car was “but it’s brown”. It really didn’t matter how good or fast it was, it was brown.
Very nice! But, too bad the airline is suffering serious cash flow and liquidity problems. The fact that they have had close to 5 CEO in a few years says the airline is in deep doo-doo
Stunning!
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