Dubai-based airline flydubai showcased its new flatbed business-class seat configuration at the Arabian Travel Market held in Dubai.

This customised offering will be available on all the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in the airline’s fleet. flydubai buys aircraft from Boeing with empty cabins.

The planes are then flown to a modification site, where the seats are installed.

Daniel Kerrison, Vice-President, Inflight Product, flydubai, explains: “This gives us the flexibility and opportunity to use the third-party site to install customised products, such as special seats and in-flight entertainment systems.”

In its business class on the new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, flydubai has launched a version of the Thompson Vantage seat that can unfold into a comfortable flatbed.

Says Kerrison: “This is a highly customised version of a Thompson Vantage seat, for which we worked with London-based JPA Design, which created the entire cabin experience — seating, carpet, lighting, music, blankets and pillows.”

flydubai’s new economy-class Recaro seat on the Max 8 aircraft is the kind normally installed on wide-bodied, long-haul aeroplanes.

Such seats would not usually be put into narrow-body aircraft but, says Kerrison, for flydubai, it's important to provide customers with comfort, especially on flights 5-6 hours long.

Cabin design

Kerrison says that cabin design keeps evolving and suppliers are able to build seating that is not only more comfortable but offers passenger more ‘living space’.

New materials have made the seats slimmer, he says, creating a bit more room. It also adds to the distance between the passenger's eye and the screen.

As part of the redesign, flydubai provides improved in-flight entertainment with a full HD, 11.6-inch screen, featuring a range of movies, TV shows, music and games in English, Arabic and Russian.

(The writer was in Dubai at the invitation of flydubai.)

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