Turkish Airlines is about to change its business class seat... despite the new cabin concept only having been in service for less than a year! Rumor has it that passengers are complaining the business class seats are too narrow.

Turkish 787
Are passengers complaining about the seat onboard the new 787? Photo: Boeing

What are the details?

Turkish Airways has a very odd business class product. Now, don't get me wrong, they offer a ridiculously good soft product. The food, the wine, the movies, the personal service is the best in the air (even better than Singapore in my opinion). But the seats are super strange!

Turkish Airlines
The oddly placed middle seat in the Turkish Airlines 777-300ER business class. Photo: Simple Flying

Onboard their Boeing 777-300ER fleet, the business class cabin is laid out in a 2-3-2 configuration. That means no direct aisle access, no suites and no privacy! That poor passenger in the middle might be getting the best dinner service you can have onboard... but better hope the flight attendant doesn't spill the duck soup in their neighbor's lap (which would never happen on Turkish).

You can see a review of my experience onboard Turkish Airlines here.

Onboard its A330 fleet, the concept is a little better, with the cabin laid out with the same seats in a 2-2-2 configuration.

What about the new business class?

Turkish Airlines has several new aircraft on order. It has 30 of the Airbus A350-900 and 30 of the Boeing 787-9 on order, with six of the latter already delivered.

It's these aircraft that have a new business class concept, the same seat design that is on Singapore Airlines' Boeing 787-10 regional fleet.

Singapore
Singapore's 787-10 business seat. Photo: Simple Flying

You can check a full review of the seat here:

There is one word I'd like to highlight in that description that I'll come back to. Singapore's Regional Seat.

According to Turkish media outlet Airporthaber, several complaints have been raised about how narrow the seat is. Especially for flights over 10 hours.

"Both passengers and the technical department of the [Airline] receiving negative feedback on the subject" - Translated.

Essentially, business class passengers traveling on these Dreamliners have taken issue with how narrow the seats seem to be (despite having direct aisle access as well as far more privacy). There have been no other complaints with the service or anything else (and economy passengers seem to love the normal seats that are the same as all other planes in the fleet) so Turkish knows that this is much more serious.

Turkish A350
The business class onboard the 787. Photo: Turkish Airlines

What is their plan?

Now, this is just a rumor at this point, but fellow aviation site One Mile At A Time reports that the airline is considering a different business class product for their remaining orders of A350-900 aircraft and Boeing 787-9 aircraft. They will keep their current jets as is, but moving forward, a wider seat option will be chosen.

Apparently this news is a little more chaotic than it seems, as new seats need to be ordered years in advance. If the airline can install these seats last minute then perhaps either they found some lying around or (tin foil at the ready) this was their plan right from the beginning.

Simple Flying reached out to Turkish Airlines but had yet to receive a reply.

What do you think? Have you flown on the Turkish Airlines Boeing 787 business class? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.