Virgin Australia unveils new business seats on A330s and 777s

Virgin Australia launched new business cabins for its Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s. These new cabins will offer all the business travelers, lie-flat beds and direct aisle access. Direct aisle access is being introduced in their aircrafts for the first time ever. The new seats will be rolled out on the A330s from March through August 2015 and on the Boeing 777s from November to early 2016. The cabins will also have 16 to 18 inches touch screen in-flight entertainment, ambient light settings and abundant space for storage.

The business/first class seat will be transformed into a flat bed with a mattress, duvet and large pillow as part of the 'Deep Sleep' service. There are various other added features like Tablet Storage, LED reading light with three brightness settings and a touch screen controller for the seat functions.

Virgin will install these Super Diamond seats (named by the manufacturer, B/E Aerospace) on all of its A330 aircrafts across Australia and the international Boeing 777-300ER aircrafts that fly to Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles with the new fully flat bed business cabins.

CEO, Virgin Australia, John Borghetti unveiled this new product in Singapore and stated that a trans-continental flight in Australia can last for as long as six hours, and the passengers need to be utterly comfortable during the journey. He also accentuated that the new cabins would have the best service and a new menu created by Chef Luke Mangan. The number of seats offered in the A330-200s will be reduced from 24 to 20 as now the seat configuration will be 1-2-1 with seats converting into a 203 cm’s long bed.

Virgin Australia also announced their plans to redesign its international premium economy seats on Boeing 777. They plan to add 3 more inches to the seat pitch and make it 41 inches, which will be like a “business lite” seat. Virgin’s 777-300ER aircrafts will have 37 business class seats instead of 33 while premium economy will have 24 seats instead of 40.