Seats

I was wondering which company manufactures Virgin Atlantics seats (Upper Class, P.E & Y - newer seats eg. A340-600).

I've heard of some such as Britax, Aviointeriors, Recaro and Contour.

The UCS is manufactured by Contour (Britax), and I think the newer "Plastic Terror" PE seat is Contour as well.

Not too sure about the latest W and Y seats (codenamed "Echo" and "Alpha"), a small number of which are being trialled on G-VWKD (the newest A346). Still waiting for pictures of these seats to show up on V-Flyer!

The Upper Class seats which used to feature on the Gatwick fleet (i.e. non-J2000) were Recaro "Business Comfort Line" seats.

I think J2000 was a Britax product.

Cheers,
Mike

From what i could see Design Q designed the upper class suite. [url]design Q[http://www.designq.co.uk/en/detail.htm/url]

Originally posted by Airbus340
From what i could see Design Q designed the upper class suite.

It was something of a collaborative effort.

ISTR Design Q were working on some seating for an executive/bizjet project which got shelved. Their designs were then taken on by Virgin Atlantic's own industrial design team who further developed it, in association with them, and some other companies, Contour included - who became the eventual production scale manufacturer of the UCS seat.

It's a shame, that despite all those skilled designers on the team, there were so many niggles, oversights, compromises, and downright screwups that got into the final design for the UCS.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a good product. I just think it could have done a lot better with some more Frequent Flyer involvement much earlier in the day. I'd guess that the designers simply don't fly enough, and therefore don't spot the things that us roadwarriors see fairly quickly.

Mike

quite a joint effort then