Dragonair upgrades business, economy with new Cathay Pacific seats

By David Flynn, January 24 2013
Dragonair upgrades business, economy with new Cathay Pacific seats

Cathay Pacific’s regional sibling Dragonair today unveilled new business class and economy seats as the airline aims to bolster its position in the Asian market, especially the rich vein of China’s growing middle class and manufacturing base.

Both seats adopt designs already used by Cathay Pacific. Dragonair expects to start flying the new seats in March 2013, with both seats fitted to the bulk of its Airbus fleet by the end of 2014.

Dragonair's business class is Cathay's new regional business class (which CX will start flying later this month)...

... while down the back of the bus you'll find the same economy seats as Cathay is now rolling out on its long-haul international flights, which debuted at the same time as it introduced premium economy.

There's also a new on-demand inflight entertainment system named StudioKA, modelled on Cathay Pacific's StudioCX system, with iDevice connectivity, USB ports and AC power sockets in every seat from tip to tail.

Dragonair spans 44 destinations in the greater Asian market from its hub in Hong Kong, and many Qantas travellers to Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei rely on Dragonair flights out of Hong Kong – with the added appeal of earning frequent flyer points and status credits on the trip.

Dragonair's new business class seat

The hybrid design of the new business class seat borrows some elements from an angled lie-flat or ‘sloping sleeper’ seat and weaves them into the more conventional form of a recliner housed in a fixed shell, to protect your space from the recline of the passenger in front.

Seat pitch has been increased from 45 inches to 47 inches on the airline’s widebody aircraft and from 42 inches to 45 inches on narrowbody aircraft, while width has also been increased from 20 inches to 21 inches on all aircraft types.

That width makes it fairly generous compared to other regional business classes, and cleverly sculpted centre and side arms will provide extra space on either side for a bit more elbow-room.

 
The seat features independent electronic controls for recline and the legrest, and articulates into a “lazy-Z” position where your feet are supported by the extra-large reclining legrest, which rises up to support your legs.

There's also headrest with six-way movement and an amply-sized table which extends from the seat in front of you. At 20 inches wide and 14.5  inches deep it'll comfortably accommodate most laptops.

Every seat also gets a universal AC socket so that you can keep working and keep your gear juiced up en route and a 12.1 inch video touchscreen.

Here's how the old and new Dragonair business class seats stack up.

 

Dragonair's new economy class seat

The new economy class seat is the same as you'll find on most of Cathay's long-distance international flights, including all those between Australia and Hong Kong.

It's built around a cradle mechanism rather than a fixed shell and sports a 9 inch touchscreen with a handy storage nook below the screen where you can stow your MP3 player, reading glasses and other small items.

Again, here's the 'old vs new' chart...

StudioKA, USB and iDevices

As we mentioned earlier, the new StudioKA  audio and video system is modelled on Cathay's StudioCX with the same familiar user interface and broad variety of content.

Every business and economy seat has its own AC powerpoint plus a USB port so you can charge your laptop, tablet or smartphone during the flight.

Dragonair also spruiks the system's ability to play music and videos from iDevices, but there's a catch: instead of using Apple's conventional 30-pin connector (or the newer Lightning connector of the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini), this is Panasonic's eXport multi-pin socket.

Here's a closer look at it on one of Cathay's premium economy seats.

To get video from your iDevice onto the in-seat screen you’ll need to use a special adaptor cable.

This has Apple’s unit iPod/iPhone connector on one end and plugs into the round multi-pin socket directly below the USB port.

You can then control video playback straight from your iDevice.

Cathay Pacific flight usually have a bunch of these on hand which are lent to passengers free of charge, and we'd expect Dragonair will do likewise.

But we suggest that frequent flyers buy their own in-flight adaptor cable (such as Griffin's eXport) to avoid being caught short.

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David

David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.

20 Feb 2012

Total posts 125

The first picture seems to have a new livery??? Dragon instead of Dragonair???

and since when was the cargo/underbelly silver??

20 Feb 2012

Total posts 125

you changed the pic!!!!!!!!!!!!??

24 Oct 2010

Total posts 2559

Hi Kash - that was a generic (but super-stylish!) 'placeholder' image set into the story in advance of it going live with the photos of the actual seats. Shortly after the story went live we received more photos from Dragonair PR, added these to the story and also to the story's lead image.

The original placeholder image came from a set created for a Dragonair print advertising campaign by UK-based TaylorJames - you can see several of the shots at https://ceiga.co.uk/blog/taylor-james-dragonair, they're quite stunning!

20 Feb 2012

Total posts 125

cool-a lot of people on flyertalk were talking about how dragonair planes were going to get the brush wing so I was wondering if this was it. 

Thanks

KG
KG

Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer

10 May 2011

Total posts 732

Any news on KA's F class offering? Are they dropping it althogether? It is currently being offered on a select type of A330 planes.

24 Oct 2010

Total posts 2559

There's been no word on this.

Cathay Pacific - Asia Miles

25 Apr 2013

Total posts 542

They're dropping first class.

AlG
AlG

04 Nov 2010

Total posts 670

Never flown Dragon Air but if they're anything like Cathay they are good for me. I will be doing more travel to Aisa this year starting with Singapore and then Hong Kong and China so I might end up using them for a lot of the flights into China. The new seats look fine for a few hours and choosing the proven CX product makes sense too.


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