. Get news about destinations opening, inspiration for future adventures, plus the latest in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.As the aviation industry looks towards a future with more videoconferencing and fewer business travelers filling business class seats, it's wooing upmarket leisure passengers to fill the gap.
"Covid was an epic reset button," explains Daniel Baron, a cabin designer and the managing director of airline design house LIFT Aero Design in Tokyo."It shifted the priorities for many travelers. More people now long for things that might have seemed less important before the world turned upside down.
"Traditionally," Baron says,"in business class there was an expectation of wide, fixed armrests on both sides of the passenger, with multiple stowage spaces. Large movable dividers were also associated with first class, not business. In practice, the flight attendants retract the wall to below the bed level, add a mattress pad and linens, and you have a first class double bed.
The modern kind of business class seats overlap cleverly with the passenger in front to provide direct aisle access to every passenger without needing the amount of space of first class.
“Business“ and ‘ snuggle class’ double beds seems an ironic contradiction in the headline if you are traveling for work. There would no peers I would want to snuggle with on a business class trip .
Are those beds in between rows of actual seats?