Any experiences with narrow-body aircraft long haul?

[Mike395]

Partially out of intrigue and partially because SAS messed up my original convoluted routing via Scandinavia - I have found myself booked on an Air Transat A321Neo to Toronto next week. Does anyone here have any experience of long haul travel on a narrow-body aircraft - am wondering if it might start to feel a bit cramped after 6-7 hours?

 

[westcoaster]

I've done the Uk to Cape Verde on a tui 737 max (6 &1/2 hours due to a headwind). I found it no different than flying to the Canaries, except having something to watch on a mobile device helped with the extra two hours.
If you can get extra space seats that may help a little, but other than that I found it no different.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Gatwick to Alice Springs and back on a 737. Fuel stops in Sharjah and Singapore. Delayed 24 hours outbound in Singapore and 18 hours inbound in Sharjah. The actual flying bit was alright, I’m pretty good at snoozing and reading

 

[Snow1964]

Air Transat has proper long haul configuration in its A321neo, 12 club seats (lie flat) and 187 economy 18 inch (46cm) wide, 31 inch (79cm) pitch, with seat back entertainment screens, and usb ports

It is not high density short haul, no screens, no business class, close to 240 (narrow) seats packed in that can get on some European airlines that use short haul configured planes on 4-6 hour flights.

I have been on an EasyJet A321neo with all seats taken, to Tenerife with headwinds, so nearer 4.5 hours. Not pleasant, and those in back few rows, and front few rows had a semi-permanent queue for limited number of toilets in the aisle. And many near the middle couldn't get any hot food (because it ran out) unless they had pre-ordered

So it rather depends on the airline, and how money grabbing, or upselling mad they are

 

[thejuggler]

Dublin - Newark on an Aer Lingus Neo, no issues. Quick to load and unload, quick to serve meals and drinks.

I do admit I was asleep for the majority of the trip, but that's standard for me on long hauls.

It was far more comfortable than 7 hours on a sardine packed Monarch A300-600 widebody with 28 inch pitch and 9 abreast.

 

[atillathehunn]

More like advanced mid-haul - Dushanbe and Samarkand - Istanbul and v.v on Turkish Airlines A321s (5.5 hours ish) and Doha - Entebbe (6 ish hours) on an QR A320.

Seats on Turkish are a bit tight, but that's also the same on any of their aircraft. The main challenge is the not per se the ratio of passengers to toilets, but their distribution. Since they are all at the back, there is no space for a queue to form for the loo except the aisle. Not ideal, and of course passengers will need to go back to their seats along the same blocked aisle. Throw the tuck trolley into the mix and it's quite the puzzle. At least on a widebody there is a bit of queue absorption space in the inter-aisle connection by the loos or the galley, and usually by the emergency exit.

The seats on the QR 320 are quite spacious, and while the toilet issue persists, the seat was quite empty so there was always an aisle seat free to dip into to let passengers/the grub cart pass.

 

[Bald Rick]

Air Transat has proper long haul configuration in its A321neo, 12 club seats (lie flat) and 187 economy 18 inch (46cm) wide, 31 inch (79cm) pitch, with seat back entertainment screens, and usb ports

Out of interest, what is the club configuration? 2+2 or 2+1?
or some sort of herringbone?

 

[chrisjo]

Concorde to Caracas springs to mind. I was off to work in Peru for 3 months. An adventure then, couldn't do it now.

 

[Snow1964]

Out of interest, what is the club configuration? 2+2 or 2+1?
or some sort of herringbone?

Appears to be 2+2 (guessing have to climb over if you are at a window

AeroLOPA | Detailed aircraft seat plans

AeroLOPA - Explore detailed aircraft seating plans and configurations.

www.aerolopa.com

 

[iannp16]

I have flown Aer Lingus Dublin-Nashville on an Airbus A321XLR return; the flights were quite heavily loaded, but it was fine. I am 6ft 2inches, and had no problems with leg room in economy outbound and came back in business.

I found the TUI Boeing 737 MAX8 from Bristol to Cape Verde appallingly bad however, and legroom worse than Ryanair, so bad in fact that to avoid flying back on it, we rebooked to fly TAP to Lisbon and easyJet from Lisbon to Bristol.

 

[Western Lord]

Of course, before 1970 all long haul flights were narrow body. People seemed to cope.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Of course, before 1970 all long haul flights were narrow body. People seemed to cope.

To be fair, the space available in economy back then was incomparable to today. 33 to 36" was pretty much the norm for seat pitch, and for instance, the 747 had 9 abreast.

i found the TUI Boeing 737 MAX8 from Bristol to Cape Verde appallingly bad however

Oddly they have fewer seats than Ryanair for the same plane, yet people seem to be universally agreed that they're much worse than Ryanair for some reason. I wonder if it's not due to the length of the flights: a 2 hour hop on Ryanair is far less troublesome than a 5-6 hour flight on TUI to some warm destination.

 

[CC 72100]

I've done London - JFK/Boston 4 times on jetBlue on their A321 neo (sometimes the regular Neo, sometimes the LR version; the product is the same in economy in any case).

Legroom-wise it felt more spacious than 777 and A330s I have flown long-haul on. Toilets - never seemed to be an issue, 2 at the rear, 1 at the front, and 1 in the middle if not on the LR version. This was for 120-140 economy passengers. The free wi-fi was a complete gamechanger in terms of product.

Given that my US destination always involves a domestic connection once there (so I'm not after the cheapest price LHR/LGW - JFK/LGA/EWR) they are my carrier of choice and even though they come out cheapest with my connection, I'd still actively choose them on a London-New York simple return flight even if they were a little pricier.

I honestly don't get the narrow body on long haul hate; once you're seated, how different does 3-3 feel compared to 3-4-3?

 

[Airline Man]

Heathrow to New York on Concorde. Very narrow bodied, service was great and didn’t have enough time to sleep. But I imagine that this plane doesn’t really count.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Heathrow to New York on Concorde. Very narrow bodied, service was great and didn’t have enough time to sleep. But I imagine that this plane doesn’t really count.

You wouldn't really have wanted to sleep while enjoying travel at supersonic speeds though would you?

Incidentally... check out my avatar on the left...

 

[Cloud Strife]

I honestly don't get the narrow body on long haul hate; once you're seated, how different does 3-3 feel compared to 3-4-3?

I think what matters far more are things like cabin altitude, the IFE system, wifi, etc. A long haul A321neo with 120-140 economy passengers sounds far nicer than hundreds of people on a widebody!

 

[CC 72100]

I think what matters far more are things like cabin altitude, the IFE system, wifi, etc. A long haul A321neo with 120-140 economy passengers sounds far nicer than hundreds of people on a widebody!

Exactly - I'd wager that a modern well-specced A321 neo will beat a 25 year old 777 any day of the week.

So perhaps the conclusion is) long-haul in a narrowbody can in fact be very good, but just do your research into the on-board product.

 

[Cloud Strife]

So perhaps the conclusion is) long-haul in a narrowbody can in fact be very good, but just do your research into the on-board product.

Yes, I think it really depends on how it's configured internally. I wouldn't take a A321LR if the airline used the dreadful Space-Flex configuration, because it's simply horrific for the cabin crew to work in. Iberia have installed them, and it's frankly horrendous: 9 hours with such a thing must be absolute hell for the cabin crew. Aer Lingus did the same, and they've crammed 182/184 seats in as well.

It's fine for short European flights, but I would rather pay a bit more so that the crew can work in reasonable conditions.

 

[RailWonderer]

Exactly - I'd wager that a modern well-specced A321 neo will beat a 25 year old 777 any day of the week.

So perhaps the conclusion is) long-haul in a narrowbody can in fact be very good, but just do your research into the on-board product.

Often narrowbodies lack the catering space to provide everyone with a hot meal needed for flights over 5 hours. In reality it's much demand driven. Turkish Airlines fly widebodies all over Europe on 2-4 hour flights yet use narrowbodies for flights to central Asia which are 5-6 hours long (although some of these have the catering space). You even get a full meal on some of their sub 4 hour flights as well as IFE and more spacious seating.

 

[ABB125]

I think long haul narrow body is probably going to be next on my list of flights to try. Plenty of transatlantic choices to look at.

 

[MalaiseForever]

I think long haul narrow body is probably going to be next on my list of flights to try. Plenty of transatlantic choices to look at.

You could also try northern Scandinavia to the Canaries for a good 6+ hour trek.

 

[ABB125]

You could also try northern Scandinavia to the Canaries for a good 6+ hour trek.

I'm not sure "6 hours on a low cost EU airline" is quite the same experience as "7 hours on SAS Oslo to Boston" or whatever. But perhaps an opportunity to compare and contrast if I did both...

 

[MalaiseForever]

I'm not sure "6 hours on a low cost EU airline" is quite the same experience as "7 hours on SAS Oslo to Boston" or whatever. But perhaps an opportunity to compare and contrast if I did both...

I didn’t say low cost… you could fly Finnair or SAS. But I take the point on differing Transatlantic service standards.

 

[AlterEgo]

You could also try northern Scandinavia to the Canaries for a good 6+ hour trek.

Finnair operate an A350 to Gran Canaria for a real contrast.

 

[MalaiseForever]

Finnair operate an A350 to Gran Canaria for a real contrast.

Indeed, they’re very well kitted out. Although they are a bit stingy with the meals in economy which is a shame.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Often narrowbodies lack the catering space to provide everyone with a hot meal needed for flights over 5 hours. In reality it's much demand driven. Turkish Airlines fly widebodies all over Europe on 2-4 hour flights yet use narrowbodies for flights to central Asia which are 5-6 hours long (although some of these have the catering space). You even get a full meal on some of their sub 4 hour flights as well as IFE and more spacious seating.

With the narrowbodies, most operators using them for full service long haul flights have full sized galleys and it's not much of an issue, usually because they only seat around 120-130 people. The issue is with Iberia and Aer Lingus, who have created possibly the worst long haul configuration. The configuration isn't a problem on short hop flights lasting an hour or two when one crew member can handle pretty much everything by themselves, but using that configuration on the A321LR/XLR with over 160 passengers and full service is nothing short of barbaric.

 

[chesterred16]

I'm not sure if the eastern coast of North America counts as long-haul, but I've done MAN-JFK on a Delta 757 about ten years ago, and more recently LHR-YHZ on an Air Canada 737. What matters is how the plane is set out, legroom, IFE etc, the physical size of the plane makes no difference to me. Both journeys absolutely fine. Once you're sat down, it doesn't matter how many aisles it's got?

 

[Tetchytyke]

I honestly don't get the narrow body on long haul hate; once you're seated, how different does 3-3 feel compared to 3-4-3?

When seated there's not much difference. The issues with the narrow bodies are with things like toilets. A BA A321 has two toilets for c.190 economy passengers, a BA B787-9 has four toilets for a smaller number of passengers. That means longer queues and, on narrow bodies, that means queuing in the aisle as there's nowhere else to wait. And that, in turn, means that if you have an aisle seat in the last 5-6 rows you're going to spend the entire flight with someone's crotch in your face and/or being constantly knocked by people on their way to or from the loo.

I think what matters far more are things like cabin altitude, the IFE system, wifi, etc. A long haul A321neo with 120-140 economy passengers sounds far nicer than hundreds of people on a widebody!

The best direct example I have had was a trip to Lanzarote a couple of years ago with Jet2. Outbound on their A330, return on one of their new A321s. Seats were identical on both. The A330 was a pleasant flight as there were plenty of toilets and space to queue, and the 2-4-2 seating arrangement felt nicer.

The A321, even with an exit row seat, was horrendous because there were too few toilets and nowhere to wait.

 

[Meole]

Taken Transat from Manchester to Toronto a couple of times, friendly and efficient, seems easier on the overhead luggage, better than a recent 14 hour over the Pacific.

 

[John R]

I did Heathrow to Halifax on an Air Canada 737 last year, and it was absolutely lovely. Admittedly we were in Premium Economy which was 2+2 seating, and was the Business Class config used for North American flights which the aircraft spends most of its time on.