South African Airways (SAA) has been undergoing significant changes, including a redesign of its aircraft interiors. This transformation aims to create a distinct brand identity that reflects contemporary South African culture and offers passengers a comfortable and stylish travel experience. The redesign project addresses the overall visual language of SAA across its passenger touch-points.
Luke Hawes, Director at Priestmangoode, explains that SAA had minimal brand continuity throughout their interior products until recently. The purchase of new narrow body aircraft provided an opportunity to build a brand platform with a distinct look and feel.
South African Airways Business Class Cabin
The new look is one of sophisticated elegance with color, pattern, and material highlights, positioning South African Airways to compete with the world’s most stylish airlines. The timeless interior displays confidence and comfort. Priestmangoode has produced impressive interiors, showcasing how simple attention to detail and the use of texture can create something very special and unique.
Design Inspired by South African Culture
The brief was to create an interior language to represent South African Airways as a national carrier, symbolizing Africa. Guidelines specified that 80% of the look should be inspired by contemporary South African culture, with the remaining 20% from the wider African continent. The cabin interiors feature vibrant colors, materials, traditional crafts, and local fashion trends, translated into a concise visual story with expressive patterns, warm tones, and textured surfaces.
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South African Airways Economy Class Cabin
The warm color tones and touches of anthracite found in the seats and curtains are offset by a cool sky-blue strip along the overhead compartments and bold reds and blues in the seat detailing. The curtain, brand panel, and magazine rack feature bespoke designed materials inspired by African craft heritage. The curtain features a geometric woven diamond pattern, while the wall foil features a linear weave design.
The color palette of the cabin contrasts the dark anthracite of contemporary South African architecture and cityscapes with the use of rich saturated golden tones of winter sun and earthen landscapes. Additionally, tones including burnt red and blues signify the ethnic color burst of civilization within the landscape.
Business Class Cabin
The customized Geven “Comoda” business class seats offer large IFE Screens and leg-rests, providing a 39″ seat pitch and a 2 x 2 seating configuration. The business class cabin features a custom Thompson Vantage XL seat, with fabric-upholstered seats providing a more comfortable environment for long journeys. The business class seat has seen a complete design overhaul, with bespoke tailored seats resulting in a wider seat offering passengers more space and a more comfortable journey. The stitching on the backrest picks up the shape of the arrow from South African Airways’ logo.
South African Airways Business Class Seat Design
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Economy Class Cabin
In economy, there is the standard 31-32″ seat pitch. Economy Class on the A330 is fitted with 203 newly designed slim-line seats, all with extra personal space and generous legroom. The design also features splashes of color which come to life through the use of the seating. The economy class cabin features muted shades of beige, anthracite and blue.
Fleet and Routes
After the recent refurbishment of South African Airways’ short-haul fleet, the carrier has now rolled out its new business class on three new A330-300’s with two more to follow. Just like the short haul cabins, the long haul aircraft now feature a myriad of South African inspired weaves, prints and colours, which are both contemporary and evoke a sense of origin. The new interiors certainly go a long way to helping the carrier turn its product around.
The twin-engine A350-900 replaces the less fuel-efficient, four-engine Airbus A340-600. The A350 also introduces a far superior onboard experience on this route, which South African is the only airline to serve. SAA's A350-900 is configured with 339 seats - 30 lie-flat seats in business class and 309 in economy, including the first six rows that offer extra legroom.
SAA has amazing lounges, stocked with plenty of both hot and cold food and even kids’ play area.
ETIHAD AIRWAYS BUSINESS CLASS CABIN REVIEW AIRBUS A330-200 / CABIN TOUR FULLHD
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