Flying POSH is back in style…..well for some!

A Report in The Times in London says that a glimpse into the future of air travel indicates that it will remain as class-ridden as in the days when rich Britons asked for  “POSH” and for those of you that don’t know that means, it is goes back to the days of those journeys to the Orient by steamer, with POSH meaning “Port Out, Starboard Home” so that the cabin was not in the sun and was on the shady side of the ship in both directions!

Emirates Airline, the world’s fastest growing international carrier, has revealed the seat configurations for its new fleet of A380 superjumbos, with the layouts for these double-decker giants suggesting that demand for POSH travel is as strong today as when ships carried passengers from Europe to the rest of the world.

Stratification of passengers will extend beyond first class, business class and economy class and there will also be a geographical hierarchy, with rich Westerners enjoying bedrooms, bars and space, while flights to India and other parts of Asia may resemble the proverbial cattle truck.

Emirates will seat 644 people on its flights from Dubai to Asia and the Indian subcontinent in a two-class configuration, with a small business class and then row after row of economy seats on both decks of the plane.

However, on routes to London and New York, there will be fewer passengers and plenty of room for premium-class passengers to move around.

Emirates’ flights to Heathrow will seat 514, which will give the airline slightly more capacity than on the New York flights.

This is considered important because the space squeeze at Heathrow means the airline cannot increase flight frequency to soak up demand.

The Dubai to New York route will seat 489, allowing business-class passengers to take over an entire deck of the plane.

Emirates’ cabin layout remains a closely guarded secret, but mock-ups are believed to exist in a hangar at the Toulouse headquarters of Airbus, which is building the A380.

With each of the A380’s decks about the size of a 747 jumbo, there will be plenty of room for Emirates to provide lounges, rest areas and bars for its business-class passengers.

Some airlines are beginning to trial the use of private cabins for first-class passengers and if Emirates adopts the idea, they could be located at the front of the plane on the lower deck.

The remainder of the lower deck would seat about 350 economy passengers. Arran Aerospace managing director Doug McVitie said: “Having only 489 people on a plane the size of the A380 gives Emirates a lot of room.”

“If they can have a business class seating 100, they are going to make a lot of money.”

“On the routes to Asia and India, they seem to be going the other way, saying capacity is more important than providing passengers with lots of space.”

Emirates is Airbus’s most important customer for the A380 with nearly a third of the $US300 million ($339 million) aircraft’s orders, and the airline having ordered 47 A380s because it expects larger planes to be needed to meet rising demand.

Demand is forecast to grow at about 5 per cent a year for the next 20 years, but it is strongest in Asia and India, where the expanding middle class is enjoying its new wealth by taking to the air.

China and India are forecast to have air passenger growth exceeding 8 per cent a year for the next two decades and Emirates wants to take advantage of this growth ordering more than 100 aircraft worth $US34 billion to expand its fleet.

The airline will take delivery of its first A380 next August, two years late as a result of production delays.

Report by The Mole