Airline forced to rearrange planes because first class seats are too heavy

The desire to fly in style weighs heavily on most of us, but for some first class flyers it weighs heaviest.

Swiss, the national airline of Switzerland, has to modify some of its planes because the new first class seats, which were to be installed as a much-needed renovation, are proving to be too heavy.

The new jumbo seats on the Airbus A330s – which have six-foot-high walls and lockable doors for each suite – are at the front of the plane, making the aircraft nose-heavy. Swiss will have to install a huge “balancing plate” at the rear of the plane to center the plane’s balance.

The new seats, dubbed “Swiss Senses,” were announced in 2023 for a winter 2025-2026 debut. The airline has promised a full made-in-Switzerland experience, with up to 37-square-foot “suites” in first class featuring sliding doors and walls that shield passengers from their fellow humans.

In a statement, Swiss said that as industry trends mean that first and business class seats are becoming heavier (to provide more privacy) and economy class seats are becoming lighter, “these two contrasting trends are changing the centre of gravity of the aircraft in which such seats are installed.”

It was said that aircraft types that tend to be nose-heavy in the first place would be particularly affected – and unfortunately the A330 is one of them. The airline will also retrofit Boeing 777s with the new seats – but without the same problem. The Airbus A340s will not get the new seats.

On the A330s, Swiss will therefore add a “balancing plate” to correct the center of gravity. This will be calculated once the new cabin interiors are installed and accurately weighed, and “will remain on board these aircraft until other options can be developed,” the spokesperson said, adding that the airline will explore technology that could replace the plate.

The plate – located at the back of the plane – will not be visible to economy passengers. The airline cannot confirm the exact weight, the spokesperson said, because it must wait for the final weight of the seats to calculate the counterweight.

Unusually for a European airline, Swiss offers a first class cabin on all its long-haul flights. It was voted best European airline first class in the 2024 World Travel Awards.

The new, heavy-duty interiors are the result of customer feedback, the spokesperson said, telling the airline “in no uncertain terms that it is time to modernize the cabin interiors of our long-haul aircraft, and in particular our Airbus A330-300s.” The planes currently fly from Switzerland to the Middle East and the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada.

The airline has tried to reduce adding weight elsewhere, by not planning sliding doors on business class seats, as other airlines have done, and by reducing the first class cabin from eight seats to four. The spokesman said adding more seats in economy to add weight to the back of the plane had been considered but rejected in order to maintain comfort in the cheaper seats.

Swiss denied it was a “planning error” and said it had used “rough estimates” of weight when planning the cabin, which have now increased as production begins and will be confirmed once the new seats are installed.

Partner airline Lufthansa has also committed to installing new seats in the revamped Allegris cabins, but a spokesperson for the German flag carrier confirmed that Lufthansa will not be converting any A330s and therefore will not face the same issue.

Flying first class is of course the most environmentally damaging form of commercial flying. The heavier seats and maximum space mean it is much less efficient than flying in a regular economy seat.

The current first class seats on Swiss weigh 205 kilograms, or 452 pounds. The final weight of the new seats “will not be known until they are installed,” the spokesperson said.

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