Today Cathay Pacific hosted an event for their Diamond members at the Peninsula Hong Kong, where their new regional business class was revealed. As you’d expect, this stirred up the avgeek community quite a bit, which had been looking forward to Cathay Pacific’s current regional business class being replaced.
I’m not a Cathay Pacific Diamond member (due to this blog, I’m quite disloyal when it comes to airline status), so I could only peer through the virtual grapevine through the friends and connections I have that are. Cathay Pacific hasn’t actually released their new regional business class seat to the general public yet, so I can only share what I’ve seen from these friends.
Cathay Pacific’s new business class: reverse herringbone, direct aisle access, no door
I follow @lucxurytraveling on Instagram, and as a Cathay Pacific member he attended the Diamond Drinks ceremony, and also added to his stories from the event. I was able to see a bit of what the Aria Studio is like through a video that was screened at the event.
There’s not too much clarity as to what the seat will be or who designed it, but from what I can see:
- This is a lie-flat seat, unlike Cathay Pacific’s current regional business class product
- Unlike what we expected, this seat will feature direct aisle access; in fact, it looks like a reverse herringbone seat, with storage (though there isn’t a fold-up legrest)
- The colour scheme and branding seem quite similar to Cathay Pacific’s long-haul Aria Suite, which debuted a couple of years ago
Cathay Pacific’s new regional business class seems to be a lite version of the Aria Suite, with a slightly shorter seat and no door
The seat will debut “at the end of 2026”, and no routes have been announced to have this product yet. Cathay Pacific also hasn’t released a seatmap, though we do know that this will first be retrofitted onto the airline’s A330s, before being introduced on their A330neos.
This is an awesome product – so much better than what I was expecting
Cathay Pacific had mentioned a while ago that they’d introduce a lie-flat regional business class product. For reference, their competition would consist of Singapore Airlines’ regional business class onboard their 787s and A350s (they have a staggered business class seat), perhaps Starlux’s business class onboard their A330neos, and Thai, which is introducing flat beds onboard their A321neos. Hong Kong Airlines also exclusively flies A330s with flat beds now, though they do also have lots of A320s with recliners in business class. So Cathay Pacific had some positioning work to do in order to match the product introduced by competitors.
The new business class seat looks like a huge improvement from Cathay Pacific’s current regional business class seat – which is just a rather impractically designed recliner, which isn’t particularly comfortable and doesn’t have much in-seat storage. The main issue with their current regional business class is that there’s no point flying it over the airline’s premium economy (unless you really value lounge access or a better meal service), which is just as comfortable and top-notch on regional flights.
Cathay Pacific’s current regional business class
I’d imagine Cathay would look for a high-density configuration – one that resembles Japan Airlines’ mid-haul reverse herringbone business class, as opposed to a more spacious longhaul business class product. The lack of a door and legrest are hints of this, and differentiate this seat from the Aria Suite. However, this new seat looks like one that I’d be very happy to fly on a 4-5 hour flight, even if it was a redeye. I’d also be happy to pay extra for it over a premium economy seat, which I wouldn’t have said about the current regional business class configuration.
I’ve commented before about airlines deciding to dumb down their regional business class seats and market them as “good for working” – while I appreciate that business travellers don’t need as much privacy or space on shorthaul flights, I’d love to see attention to detail in the seat’s ergonomics, such as a good amount of storage space (hopefully more so than the Aria Suite, which had a disappointing amount of storage), and a sturdy work setup.
Which aircraft/routes will feature Cathay Pacific’s new regional business class?
Cathay Pacific will introduce their new regional business class onboard their A330s and A330neos. The airline doesn’t have any plans to introduce them on their regional 777s, and will seek to phase those planes out by early 2030s (yep, the 2012-generation regional business class seats will be flying for another 5 years).
While the airline hasn’t announced any routes that will feature their new regional business class, we know that the airline has set aside some airframes to introduce this new product. Specifically, A330s with registrations B-LB_ will be retrofitted with this new product, as well as B-HWM (I don’t know why). The airline is choosing not to introduce their “refreshed” regional business class onboard these airframes, due to the short amount of time those planes would be operating before they got the new seats.
Cathay Pacific’s A330s will be the first to get the new regional business class, though not all airframes will
The video screened at the Diamond Drinks event suggested an “end 2026” introduction for these seats.
I’d suspect that Taipei, Bangkok, and Singapore would be the first routes to see the new regional business class, due to the high-yield nature of these routes and the number of frequencies. However, that’s just my guess – Cathay Pacific hasn’t made any formal announcements yet.
Conclusion
Cathay Pacific is debuting a new regional business class product, and we know it’ll be lie-flat and have direct aisle access. The seat bears many similarities to a reverse herringbone seat, just with a slightly shorter bed length, and no door. We know that these seats will be introduced on select A330s and all upcoming A330neos, though not their regional 777s. These seats will begin flying from “end 2026”, without a more specific timeline for now.
While we just got a teaser today, there’s promise in this being a much more competitive offering than Cathay Pacific’s current (and much-disliked) regional business class seat. The seat looks sleek and the branding is great, though I’d love to see a good amount of attention to detail in these seats.
What are your thoughts on Cathay Pacific’s new Aria Studio?
