Airline forced to rearrange planes over first class seats

Is it worth flying first class?

Swiss International Air Lines is being forced to reconfigure its planes because their new first class seats are too heavy, CNN reports.

Swiss, the national airline of Switzerland, is set to install the new seats, known as Swiss Senses, as part of a revamp to improve the passenger experience, with the launch scheduled for winter 2025-2026.

The jumbo seats feature 1.80-metre-high walls and lockable sliding doors per 3.5 square metre suite, giving passengers a true Swiss experience.

Because these seats were located in the front of the Airbus A330s, the plane eventually became nose-heavy. The airline will have to install a huge “balancing plate” at the back of the plane to balance it.

Once the new interior upgrades are installed and weighed, the balancing plates will be installed and “will remain on board these aircraft until other options are developed” while the airline searches for possible replacement technology.

The license plate is not visible for economy passengers.

The airline’s current first class seats weigh 452 pounds, and the final weight of the new seats “will not be known until they are installed,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Industry trends are seeing first and business class seats becoming heavier to provide passengers with more privacy, while economy class seats are becoming lighter, Swiss said in a statement, according to CNN, and “these two contrasting trends are changing the center of gravity of the aircraft in which such seats are installed.”

Although airlines’ Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s are soon to be refurbished for first class, only the Airbus A330s are affected by this problem. This is because they are high-nosed aircraft.

The spokesperson noted that the renovations were in response to customers telling the airline “in no uncertain terms that it is time to modernize the interiors of our long-haul aircraft, and in particular our Airbus A330-300s.”

Swiss has tested reducing the weight of other aspects of the plane, possibly eliminating sliding doors and reducing the first class cabin from eight seats to four. They have also considered adding more seats to economy to even things out, but the airline has rejected the idea in favor of maintaining passenger comfort.

The airline denies this was a “planning error” and says it used “rough estimates” of the weight, which will only be confirmed once work on the aircraft is fully completed.