That being said, the airline does already plan to retrofit its fleet of Airbus A340 aircraft with a different configuration that would see the size of the business class cabin reduce to 18. This is actually a layout the airline originally planned to launch with – its current cabins feature the same seat products and layout as when the aircraft belonged to former owner Finnair, just refurbished.
“We have an excess of business class capacity today on this aircraft, and the premium is the one that most companies will look at going forward in the future,” said Terzakis.
“We were supposed to have started with these configurations since the very beginning, it’s no mystery that our programme has slipped by a few months. We were in a situation where we had to launch a service, so we decided to defer that reconfiguration until the winter.”
But it’s not all bad news. The reconfiguration will also see the introduction of a new premium economy seat product that will be in a separate cabin.
“The premium economy seats will be 1.5 inches wider and offer a recline of up to 18 degrees,” said Terzakis. The layout will also be seven abreast.
Reconfiguration of the aircraft will take about a month each, which is why the airline is waiting until winter to begin the retrofit. Currently, Air Belgium has just two aircraft, with the third joining the fleet in the coming days and the fourth towards the end of this summer.
Air Belgium plans to use these aircraft for its Hong Kong as well as future China routes, though it has plans to bring new aircraft into its fleet in future. These are unlikely to be A340-300s – aircraft Terzakis previously informed Business Traveller are interim aircraft – though precisely which models they will be has yet to be decided.
Any new aircraft likely wouldn’t be delivered before at least 2019.