A new seating arrangement

During my recent HKG-MNL flight, I finally saw the new, reconfigured 747 business class seats. The first time I heard about it was during a get together at Tanya's place. The flight attendants in attendance were all talking about how confusing the seats were and that the seats were a bit claustrophobic. And after "test flying" these babies, I have to agree with both observations.



Unlike the conventional seats that face forward, the new ones are diagonal in orientation. So instead of seeing a seat in front of you, the view you'll get is that of your neighbor's knees. Another oddity that these slanted seats create is this: it's easy to get disoriented when you take off. Because your body is in a 45 degree angle as the plane moves, it can be a bit dizzying. Plus, there's a tendency for you to slip off the seat, ergo the new seatbelt with a harness function.

The reason why the seats can cause claustrophobia is because the screens on both ends are too high. It felt like I had blinders during the entire trip. Having gotten used to seeing my seatmate - and sometimes talking to them - I felt isolated and alone. Heck, I couldn't even see the windows because the other seats were blocking it.

But these new seats also have a couple of plus points. First up, it fully reclines up to 90 degrees and that makes sleeping much more comfortable. This is great for long haul trips, but since my flight was less than 2 hours, I wasn't able to experience this level of comfort.



If you like in-flight movies - and I love them - you'll have a field day watching them because the TV screen is huge! Like a mini-plasma screen, it pulls out in front of you. Once again, it blocked my view of my fellow travelers and all I could see was Kim and Kloe Kardashian as they partied in Las Vegas.

Before I could play around with the seat some more, the plane was already descending into NAIA. On my way out, my FA friend who was on the same flight told me that CX was planning to remove these seats because they were getting too many complaints from frequent fliers. Complaints that, I must say, are valid.

I hope they're not rushing the phase-out operation, though. I'd like to get these seats when I fly to ATL next month.