Fiji Airways eyes premium economy

Fiji Airways could be the next airline to embrace premium economy seating as it leans into the premium leisure space.

The South Pacific carrier already offers extra-legroom Bula Space seats on its Airbus A350 jets, with 34 inches of pitch compared to 31–32 inches for regular economy seats.

But apart from priority boarding, Bula Space is economy class – just with a little extra room to stretch your legs, putting it into the standard ‘economy plus’ bucket.

Fiji Airways' Bula Space: same economy seat, but with more legroom.

But a true premium economy product – with improved seats, legroom in the realm of 38–40 inches, and upgraded meals – “would work very well for Fiji Airways and would be in line with our offering and our brand and the premium service that we’re known for,” airline boss Paul Scurrah tells Executive Traveller.

Scurrah, who joined the island carrier in November last year, is noticeably more relaxed than during his final months at Virgin Australia, when the industry veteran steered Virgin away from pandemic collapse and into a new future under the private ownership of Bain Capital.

There’s a salt-and-pepper beard, the hair that’s a bit longer, the cheery smile that’s a lot more frequent.

In his wardrobe, crisp shirts (sans tie) and jackets now take second place to a collection of colourful Bula shirts.

Fiji Airways CEO Paul Scurrah.

Scurrah says the Fiji Airways team is “still working through the final decision-making” on premium economy... we strongly believe that premium economy would work well for us, it’s just making sure that the execution can be done in a way that succeeds for Fiji Airways, to make sure that we’re able to deliver on that promise.”

Central to this would be rolling out premium economy across the bulk of the Fiji Airways fleet, beyond its current A350 flagships.

“We want to be certain that it’s going to actually be able to be consistently delivered across our entire fleet, because we know that’s important to our customers.”

That includes the smaller Airbus A330s, although the Boeing 737s may need to settle for the compromise of Bula Space.

“I think it wouldn’t be a complete game changer if we couldn’t offer it on every aircraft type – but we’d want to be certain we can manage the difference... making sure that to the extent that we can, that the product is the same across the aircraft types that we operate.”

“So once we get the data in on what it would take, then we’ll make a decision.”

Fiji Airways' Boeing 737.

“It would be a couple of years before we had the sort of broad rollout of a product, once we decided to do it.”

We wouldn’t be the first airline in the world dealing with product inconsistency, but we do want to minimise it.”

“So we want to make sure that, you know, even if we are to do it and there are planes that don’t have it, how do we actually make sure that it’s not a big issue for those that are missing out?”

Fiji Airways' A330s are finally getting Wi-Fi...

Also on the cards: inflight Wi-Fi for Fiji Airways’ workhorse Airbus A330s.

“That is on the drawing board to be corrected as they go through their future (maintenance) checks,” Scurrah says.

The Oneworld member currently relies on two different satellite service providers: ViaSat for the Airbus A350s, and Panasonic for the Boeing 737s.

The A330s “would probably (get) the same as one of those, whichever one we figure out is more appropriate at the time.”