SWISS has delayed (yet again) the refurbishment of its aging A340-300 fleet. But the plane will not be retired anytime soon.
In an era of efficient, twin-engine 787s and A350s, four engine aircraft are on the decline. But after originally planning to retire them, SWISS has breathed new life into its A340 fleet.
The plan was to have all of them refurbished by the end of last year. That did not happen and the new retrofit completion date was set for around this time this year. But that did not happen either. Now SWISS hopes to update all three cabins on this aircraft by the late spring or early summer of 2019.
What is the reason for the delay? First class. Ah, SWISS First Class…
While SWISS is not planning a revolutionary new product aboard the A340, it is facing certification issues with its new first class seat, which will resemble what is available onboard the 777-300ER.
Currently, SWISS still has a fairly dated first class seats aboard its A340s. I’ve flown this once before several years ago from Shanghai to Zurich. The same plane still operates the same route. The soft product also has not changed. I bet if I published the trip report from seven years ago now and did not date it, no one would know the difference.
The refurbished A340s will also feature new IFE, updated galley, and additional seats in economy class. With this update, SWISS plans to keep the A340s in the fleet for several more years.
CONCLUSION
This is an important lesson that even in wealthy Switzerland, it is not always cost-efficient to dump less efficient aircraft for more efficient ones. SWISS will retain its gas-guzzling aircraft because it sees that as a better alternative to the capital expenditure required for new aircraft.
> Review: SWISS 777-300ER First Class Zurich to Los Angeles
Anxiously awaiting for your Aeroplan SWISS F update…
The word from the inside is that the real reason for the delay is the pending Aeroplan lawsuit.
It all goes down to doing a cost benefit analysis of additional fuel used per A340 over a similar aircraft over a certain distance vs amortization costs of new aircraft purchase. And I trust Swiss on getting their math right.
Speaking of SWISS… 🙂
Actually, having flown Airbus’s only other quad-jet NOT a double decker (aka the A340) earlier this year on two different airlines (Virgin Atlantic & South African Airways) for a total of three flights, a pair across the pond aboard Virgin Atlantic JFK-LHR-JFK (to LHR in a 34” pitch “Extra Legroom” row/seat for the zippy overnight 6pm departure from JFK that had a nice tailwind and arrived very early; back to JFK in the bulkhead row of Premium Economy for the end of the day 8:10pm departure that had a headwind that made that flight a little longer than scheduled (it was mid-Feb out; early March back), and a 2-hour domestic flight to Johannesburg from Cape Town on SAA in its 33”-34” pitch Economy cabin (with both airlines’ being A340-600s featuring 2-4-2 eight abreast seating in Y, and Virgin Atlantic’s PE at 2-3-2), I view SWISS’ decision to keep soldiering on with its A340s (albeit with some “densification” that I would imagine will shrink/narrow row pitch an inch or two 🙁 …cue virtual eye rolls…and a big time sigh, too 😉 ) as I found that plane, even with its wonky to use, and the less desirable low res screens for the seat-back/or in our bulkead row, extending up by a metal “arm”, IFE, to easily be among my favorite planes in either class (PE & Economy) despite its age – and absolutely FAR PREFERABLE in Economy to the cabin aboard the pair of Boeing 787-9s we took for the two 11+ hours flights we took between LHR and Johannesburg we saw on that flight.
Thankfully, and largely oweing to the miserable, nine abreast 3-3-3 17” wide seats on Virgin Atlantic’s “Nightmareliner’s” for Economy pax 787-9s, that in February & March had only very limited 34” pitch “Extra Legroom” rows at all, and all of which were on opposite sides of the cabin on the window-middle-aisle groups of seats, which made options extremely limited for my partner who has reduced/limited mobility due to Polio he had as a young child, our seats on those “densified” Boeing beasts were in the bulkhead row of PE for those flights long, overnight flights, so the worst aspects of being confined in seats as narrow (and uncomfortable) as our recent Bombardier CRJ-900 flight in Delta’s C+ were a 90 mins flight RDU-EWR were avoided completely (other than for me sampling a seat it briefly, but yet still, encountering for real multiple times inflight the hideous, and to me, dangerously narrow aisles during the overnight hours when the cabin lights are dimmed, and most of the pax in aisle seats, on both sides, are sleeping or attempting to sleep, with their feet, legs, hands, elbows, arms, torsos, shoulders, and even their heads leaning/drooping, and extending out every which way into those shamefully narrow aisles where no matter how slow I shimmied down the aisles and back, while literally twisting and pivoting so as to better reduce the amount of width needed for my average sized body that’s neither exceptionally tall nor particularly wide, it still was utterly impossible to not kick a lot of outstretched limbs of all shapes and sizes, while also bumping into more than a few heads in each direction on every trip.
Utterly impossible! (I was gobsmacked!)
All I could think each time during those flights was how lucky we were to have escaped that horribleness and discomfort in practical terms – but more importantly, how important it was for my partner to not be in harm’s way were he to be in an aisle seat overnight with others attempting to navigate those preposterously narrow aisles in the dead of night as I had.
By comparison, on the two flights we took in Economy on the A340, with its wider aisles, wider economy seats, and its 2-4-2 configuration that completely eliminates the need for a stranger to ask my partner to get up when they need to use the loo, or want to stretch inflight on long hauls (or worse, attempt to climb over him if he/we’re asleep), or when I got up to stretch and walk around as I typically like to do on flights longer than 2-3 hours in between beverage/meal service (just to keep the blood flowing as most experts recommend for mid- & long- haul flights) on the LHR-JFK VS flight in PE, negotiating the wider aisles from the bulkhead rows of PE all the way to the loos/galley in the far rear of the A340 and back was NEVER a problem even in darkened cabins midflight.
Not one “pinky” toe, let alone any other shins, calves, other limbs, hands, elbows – or heads (yes, heads!) – were even grazed, much less kicked, bumped, or smacked into on ANY of the A340 flights like they were every time, and multiple/several times at that, as they were on the flights when I attempted to walk to the back and return to our seats in row 21 on Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787-9s.
Not once on any of those three Airbus A340-600s!
Same as on our other flights aboard the Airbus A330, which was our “go to” favorite plane until I finally flew the mostly shunned by airlines for operating costs, and shunned/loathed by most pax simply for their dated cabins and antiquated IFE, four engine, A340, for the first time earlier this year – and fell in love with it!
Yeah, it’s like a flying time machine (which as an old school AvGeek is fine by me even if most others’ don’t see any charm to be had flying that ancient plane as I do!) – but so, too, are Boeing’s tragic 737s even when new when one is “treated” to that old school vibe/ambiance of staring at nothing more than the pleather of the bare, IFE-less seat-back in front of them when they’re stuck on American’s depressing and abominable (so NOT an) “Oasis” 737s (MAX or its twice “densified” -800NG’s), and likely soon, copycatting United once it gets around to “announcing” that “pax ‘prefer’ its (terrible, but free) streaming IFE in overwhelming numbers to its fee based seatback, DirecTV, ‘option’, and therefore our pax have ‘spoken’ and we’re ripping those screens out to ‘give our pax what they say they WANT’” (because we all know that’s not a matter of “if”, but only WHEN – when the odds are so deliberately stacked to influence consumer behaviors by offering one thing for “free” and the other for a fee when they’re already angry, beleagured, and NOT in the mood to pay the airline a “nickel” – or “dime” – more for IFE, even if one option is vastly superior to the other, and were they either both offered on similar terms for free or for comparable additional fees, there’s no doubting which “option” would truly be the actual preferred one!).
Anyhow, while as with any cabin refresh these days for already degraded, abused, unloved, and unwanted (except for fleecing whenever possible), Economy flyers, it comes with the loss of legroom and personal space as the trade-off, who knows? – perhaps a modernized A340 featuring updated seatback IFE and like “new” interiors at SWISS just might win over the hearts and minds of many others who aren’t hard core AvGeeks who find other charms for an otherwise ancient, and mostly unloved, airplane as I did instantly when I finally stepped aboard the A340 this year, and during its twilight years…
…who knows?!?!
But for sure, a refreshed A340 gets my vote as Airbus’s A330 & 340s are by far far more comfortable for our flights, which for long hauls, are more likely to be in Economy than in the pointy end (even if sometimes we manage to make a trip in PE possible!).
SWISS introduced new lounges at their hub in ZRH – that’s at least something.