Last Week at Economy Class and Beyond (20th July)

If there’s rain, sunshine and lots of kids about, it must be the summer holiday season in England at least. But it’s still Saturday, with the world going around as usual.

Time for Last Week at Econoy Class and Beyond.

I’m not in Kansas any more. Worse. I’m in Solihull – The Touchwood Shopping Centre, Solihull.

TRIP REPORT: Exploring Innovation in a Rush

I had this bright idea of getting three parts of this out this week. That went down the pan on Friday when Airbus did what it does best. There’ll be some more next week – although our publishing pattern is heavily distributed next week for pretty obvious reasons.

• BA974 London Heathrow to Hamburg Airport (Club Europe)
• Into Hamburg and The Ibis Budget, St Pauli

From Aircraft Interiors Expo

Some more analysis and deep dives from AIX 2024 – some of these took a lot to write…

• Recaro shows off the R Sphere – A seat with sustainable materials, as well as a glimpse of the future? – You’ll never guess where you can use fishing nets in a seat.
• Examining MAYA by Collins Aerospace and Panasonic Avionics – the next step forward in seating? – 45″ Curved OLED, with Comfort. Is it too much screen?
• DEEP DIVE: The A321XLR interior demonstrator – glimpses of a near future – Coming much sooner thanks to the Airbus announcement on Friday.

Seating

• Alaska Airlines selects further seats from Recro Aircraft Seating for its cabin retrofit – Over 12,000 seats for Alaska Airlines

New Aircraft News

• Boeing pulls in pre-Farnborough Orders – two sets of orders announced pre-show. Considering the scaled-back presence of Boeing this year… could this be a sign?
• Airbus receives EASA type authorisation for the A321XLR – Clearing the path to deliveries and first flights.

Loyalty

• ITA Airways kicks off its status match programme – Who wants to be disloyal without flying a single leg with ITA Airways? Step this way…

Pretty pictures

• Iberia Airbus A330-200 arriving at London Heathrow – some football-related thing delayed the airplane art…

Next Week

It’s the Farnborough Air Show next week, with the static and aircraft assembling for the week ahead. And of course, I won’t be onsite – sadly I have a go-live in that week, that needs me, rather than looking at Aviation news coming thick and fast.

However, that means at Economy Class and Beyond, we’ll be offering our daily digests, published around 18:00 to 19:00 each day, with a digest of orders, pictures and quotes as airlines, lessors and OEMs make their announcements, all in one easy post.

If you want to jump on this (with all the spelling errors too), please consider joining our mailing list. We’ll also try our best to broadcast updates via the various social platforms!