New comfort for Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand will become the first airline to install the most advanced Economy Class seats in the world in its upgraded Pacific Class main cabin.

The seats, developed by a United States company, are considerably ahead of com petition and boast features only normally found in the Business Class area of an air craft.

Through a combination of modem materials and sophisticated ergonomic design, the Pacific Class seats offer improved back, leg and head support together with a 10 per cent increase in usable personal space and leg-room for travellers.

The Pacific Class seats have a new headrest - with a height adjustment range of more than four centimetres and

adjustable wings to provide side support.

Other features include adjustable footrests and improved recline that offers move ments in the seat’s back and bottom cush ions.

Air New Zealand’s customer comfort upgrade programme includes new, more spacious seating arrangements in First Class, Business Class and Pacific Class cabins aboard the airline’s international fleet of Boeing 747 and 767 aircraft.

The new seating arrangements are the product of work for the airline by seat spe cialists such as Open Ergonomics and Jones Garrard, and seat manufacturers

Bums Aerospace.

Air New Zealand’s new Business Class seating arrangements offer an even wider range of features to enhance individual passenger comfort.

A new seating configuration in the Business Class cabin produces a 100 per cent increase in leg-room, with seats set at

a 50-inch pitch (previously 40-inch).

The individual seats feature fully

adjustable legrests, headrests and lumbar support and are also fitted with personal video units, linked to a nine-channel enter tainment system. Produced by B/E Aerospace, the video units have been selected for their high reliability character istics.

Air New Zealand’s First Class seats have been designed to provide superior sleeping comfort.

The seats offer touch control seat recline, coupled with an adjustable lumbar support and an angled, articulating bottom cushion to provide sleeping travellers with more effective support. The seats are set at 60- inch pitch.

New First Class seat features include individual video channels which cus tomers can use to make personal selections from nine channels of entertainment options.

Travellers will find First Class cabin facilities on Air New Zealand International’s Boeing 747-400 aircraft.

Other aircraft in the fleet will feature only Business Class and Pacific Class cabins.

Work on the new seating arrangements will be carried out progressively on the Air New Zealand International fleet through out this year. The programme is already under way.

The first Boeing 767 aircraft to be fitted with new Business Class seats came into service in April. New First Class seating features in Boeing 747-400 aircraft will start to be introduced at the end of May, while installation of new Pacific Class seats aboard all aircraft in the International fleet will commence in mid-August.

The installation programme is schedule for completion by the end of December 1996. ■

New seats add to the comfort on Air New Zealand’s Economy Class