The FAA is assessing the safety of new business class suites
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What new business‑class suites are airlines installing and why are they controversial?
It's time for our daily tech and business report. Today we're joined by Sid Phillip. Bloomberg, Chief Aviation Correspondent. Airlines have been adding special seats and beds to accommodate first class and premium travelers, but now the FAA is questioning the safety of those seats. So Sid, first of all, what kind of seats are we talking about? The are these those ones that I see like you're you you can lay across all the economy seats in in one big sort of bench or is this something else?
Uh, these are actually more the sort of um business class suites that every airline seems to be introducing these days which have full flat beds that you can sort of uh stretch out on and they also have s some of them have doors, some of them have uh configurations that allow you to combine two of them. So there's many different kinds of business class seats. And these sheets are proving to be a bit of a headache for the airlines and more importantly for the regulators because of the certification challenges.
Why is the FAA concerned about passenger evacuation and seat‑belt safety in these suites?
Well what's the problem? Is it just that you can't get out fast enough?
Uh that is one of them. So the challenges are essentially um not getting out of fast enough, also whether um passengers can be properly strapped in and how those seats hold up in events like sudden breaking and those sort of events are what really cause uh regulators to pose and say, Hey, we need to examine each of these seats and every time an airline changes how their business class configures is f configured, that's basically when regulators have to go back and investigate whether or not those seats meet regulatory norms.
No, they've had lie flat seats for a long time now, and I assumed that those were okay.
Uh they have and so everything uh uh airlines are sort of trying to differentiate their business classes and it's sort of an arms race to get better and better business class seats because those customers typically pay the most to get on those planes. And so because the airlines are constantly innovating and constantly adding new features, constantly adding new amenities, that really causes each of those seats have to be recertified.
How do certification challenges affect airlines’ ability to roll out new premium seats?
And it's not just the sort of m one size fits all and airlines are sort of doing bespoke configurations and that again creates new challenges for certification.
Well, you would think that they would have gotten the okay um from the regulators before they started putting 'em in planes.
Absolutely. And so that's where the challenge of the aviation industry is typically because a seat that is certified for one particular model may not have been certified for another. And also in the case of the and that's what the regulators are saying, that we need to get these seats certified before you start uh getting planes equipped with them and many planes equipped with them and that's when challenges arise because airlines are sort of There's also a very long lead time for these seats because typically getting these seats uh through sort of design and into production takes a while and then actually getting them onto planes takes a while and get the the entire process is pretty backed up with supply chain constraints.
So airlines are trying to optimize to get their seats, trying to get the
What financial impact do delayed seat certifications have on airlines and their passengers?
aircraft on time and also sort of cater to those premium passengers. At the same time, regulatory sort of delays are holding up those deliveries and airlines are not able to either have those seats on planes or not take delivery of aircraft that are ready except for the seat certification.
Well that's gonna cost a lot of money. I mean I already seen um promotions and video marketing videos that kind of really tout how very cool these little pods are. And I would imagine um that it's gonna cost 'em a pretty penny if someone comes along and says, Mm mm, no, not ready.
Exactly. And cost airlines money in terms of just not being able to sell those premium seats because typically business class is where airlines tend to make most of their money and so not being able to charge more for those seats is a bit of a a dampener for the airlines.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What new business‑class suites are airlines installing and why are they controversial?
0:00–0:57
2
Why is the FAA concerned about passenger evacuation and seat‑belt safety in these suites?
0:57–2:04
3
How do certification challenges affect airlines’ ability to roll out new premium seats?
2:04–3:06
4
What financial impact do delayed seat certifications have on airlines and their passengers?
3:06–3:55
5
How might ongoing FAA scrutiny shape the future design of business‑class cabins?
3:55–4:42
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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