Qantas Business Seats to Perth – What are you thinking?

Today, Qantas announced that it will move Airbus A330’s on to its Perth-East Coast (Melbourne + Sydney) flights with a new business class seat:

So – they are trying to tell you that these crappy business class seats (really the same as Premium Economy they use on longhaul), with a closed off middle seat are better than Virgin’s actual business class seats? (below)

Ben Sandilands nails it again when he says:

Now, consider the competition. It also has A332s on these routes, and while the oldest two have three middle seats in a 27 seat layout, the newer ones have full sized two by two by two seating with superior legroom to the 36 seat layout Qantas is putting the same type of jet with the middle seat in each of six rows with inferior legroom blocked out for a so called work space that is ergonomically awkward and perhaps even painful to use.

The numbers are clear. In Virgin Australia there will be 24 or 27 seats in the same cabin Qantas sells up to 36 out of the installed 42 seats, with six of them blocked off for ‘work space’. What a joke.

 It’s as if Qantas has given up the fight for corporate travellers, before the battle has really started.

If you were to tell me the new Qantas strategy was to combine Qantas and Jetstar domestic and become a low cost airline so that Virgin could take up a role as a full service airline – I would not roll my eyes.

For details on all the services Qantas will ‘provide’ – see Australian Business Traveller