TRAVEL NEWS
News and Informations for the Travel Manager
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Travel News
| Delta Aims To Be First U.S. Airline To Provide Lie-Flat Business Class Seats |
12.10.2006 |
| Delta Air Lines today announced its intention to be the first U.S. carrier to offer lie-flat seats for international business class travel. The carrier will have new lie-flat sleeper suites beginning in 2008, with the delivery of two new long-range Boeing 777s, which at first will serve its longest haul routes. Delta then will install the suites on all of its 777s and 767s by 2010.
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The 6-ft., 3-in. completely flat sleeper seats will provide a privacy screen and direct aisle access as well as on-demand digital video and music.
"Our longest flights will have it first, and all the triple sevens will be done by 2009," Delta COO Jim Whitehurst told BTN.
Meanwhile, international economy class customers on board the reconfigured 767 and 777 aircraft will have new all-leather seats and enhanced amenity and food offerings and a complimentary cocktail with every meal.
Rather than putting all emphasis on international growth, Whitehurst said, "I think of our strategy as balancing our network appropriately between domestic and international. If you look at where we want to be in the next couple of years, it puts us about average for the network carriers when it comes to domestic versus international mix. In the next couple of years we are going to get to 40 percent international, from about 20 percent lasts year and in the low 30s this year. It is a very major shift, but it is really more of a balancing than a walking away from the domestic marketplace." |
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