In July 2019, ANA announced out of nowhere that it started reconfiguring its 777-300ER aircraft with new seats. Particularly interesting were the airline’s new “THE Suite” first class and “THE Room” business class seats.
The aircraft featuring these seats were first introduced on the Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow route back in August.
Today, ANA announced that it will be deploying aircraft with the new cabins on select Tokyo – New York flights starting on November 8, 2019.
ANA THE Suite & THE Room Routes
Starting on November 8, 2019, ANA will operate the refurbished 777-300ERs on both some of its flights from Tokyo Haneda (NH110/NH109) as well as from Tokyo Narita (NH10/NH9) to New York JFK.
With that, it will offer by far the best business class hard product between the two cities. The same arguably applies for first class as well. Seeichi Takahashi, Senior Vice President of ANA, said in a written statement:
ANA is again raising the bar by bringing its top-of-the-line Boeing 777-300ER to the Tokyo-New York.
Unfortunately, however, the airline will not do so yet for all of the flights. Instead, it will only be a couple of times a week on each of the routes. As such, the onboard experience might feel inconsistent (in the negative sense) for passengers that unknowingly book their outbound flight in THE Room and their return flight in the regular business class seat.
Besides the New York route, as mentioned in the introduction, the new product can be flown on ANA’s daily Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow rotation (NH211/NH212).
While the rollout of aircraft with the new cabins is fairly slow, ANA plans to introduce them on more routes in the future. The next, and so far the only known, route that is scheduled to be operated by the refurbished aircraft is Tokyo Haneda – Frankfurt, starting from 2020 winter schedule.
THE Room Is ANA’s First Business Class Seat with Doors
Prior to refurbishing some of its 777-300ERs with the new seats, all of them featured fairly standard staggered seats in business class. Other aircraft that ANA uses on long-haul flights including the 787s (read my review) and A380s feature staggered seats as well.
As such, THE Room is the airline’s first business class seat to be equipped with a door.
In many ways, the seat looks very similar to Qatar Airways’ QSuite. However, it’s considerably wider. In fact, it’s – together with some of Singapore Airlines’ seats – one of the widest business class seat in the world.
THE Suite first class seats are, on the other hand, more or less identical to those that ANA introduced on its A380s earlier in the year.
They are still a considerable improvement over ANA’s “open” first class seats that it uses on most of its 777-300ERs.
Both of the new seats were designed by Kengo Kuma, a Japanese architect, and British design firm Acumen. When revealing the seat for the first time, Ian Dryburgh, Founder and CEO of Acumen, commented that:
Our work focused on transforming the cabin experience by fusing the rich history and culture of Japan with modern design principles and technologies. Combining our expertise in aviation interior design with the renowned visionary approach of Kengo Kuma, together we have created a striking cabin that has elevated the ANA customer experience to its highest level across all classes.
Summary
Personally, I love the design of the new seats – especially of THE Room – and hope to try them sometimes soon. As such, it’s great to see ANA introducing it on another set of flights.
It’s also great to see it being introduced not only on its flagship route from Tokyo Haneda to New York, but also on the less premium route from Tokyo Narita. Likewise, it’s good to know that the aircraft will also be introduced on flights to Frankfurt next year.
That said, I hope that the rollout of these seats will speed up a bit in the next year or two and that it will extend beyond ANA’s most premium routes.
