The luxury arms race at the front of planes may be contributing to chronic delays in the delivery of the aircraft themselves.
A growing shortage of planes has many causes – supply disruptions, a lack of engines and a delay in custom aircraft seats, which are being held up by more stringent certification requirements.
This obstacle in part reflects airlines’ desire to find more ways to pamper business class passengers – more comfortable seats with more features – but also the need for regulators to ensure the new seating is safe.
The seats aren’t made by aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing, but by a dedicated industry dominated by a few companies such as Safran and RECARO that work with airlines to install them when new planes are delivered. Regulators must certify the seats as a standalone object then for use in a specific aircraft.
With this arrangement, the road to more business class comfort has inadvertently created a barrier to delivery of more planes.
Paris-based Safran, one of the world’s largest providers of aircraft seats, said “the seat certification process, particularly for business class, has become significantly more complex and demanding in recent years due to innovation and the tightening of regulatory requirements.”
“To address this, Safran Seats works closely with the authorities and anticipates changes in order to certify its products efficiently despite these increased challenges,” a spokesperson said.
In 2025, the company delivered 2600 business class seats – 150 more than in 2024.
For now, Australian airlines have not been caught up in the latest stumble to delay delivery of planes. But with Qantas Group due to take delivery of 49 Airbus aircraft in fiscal years 2026-2027, including the Project Sunrise-customised A350-1000ULRs, the airline will monitor the situation closely.
“There are global supply chain challenges and evolving testing requirements that are having an impact on aircraft deliveries for airlines,” said a Qantas Group spokesperson.
“We are continuing to receive new aircraft each month as part of our large fleet renewal program, and we’re working closely with aircraft manufacturers, suppliers and regulators to ensure our delivery schedule is maintained.”
The trouble with business seats is that as airlines design new configurations, such as side- or rear-facing seats or full lie-flat seats, complexity of the seating increases.
One hang-up has been the popularity of small privacy doors added to business seat pods.
US Federal Aviation Administration rules prohibit any door between a passenger and an exit door from the plane for safe evacuations. American Airlines had to seek an exemption from the FAA for the privacy door on its flagship suites. United is seeking a similar carve-out for its A321 XLRs on order.
Business seats routinely offer new types of charging stations, more stowage and personalised controls.
The safety regulation requirements colliding with the wave of business class options has created the latest ripple in the industry-wide slowdown in plane deliveries – with an estimated global backlog of 17,000 aircraft.
Lufthansa’s refitted 787 Dreamliners were prevented from full certification by the FAA last year as it checked on how the seats were bolted to the cabin floor.
In October, Lufthansa began to fly the 787s with 24 out of 28 business-class seats blocked off, or 85 per cent of their most profitable seats empty.
This week, Lufthansa said all but three of the seats would be available for booking in April.
“Nothing now stands in the way of the approval of Allegris Business Class in the Boeing 787-9 – with the exception of three seats in the second row of the compartment,” the company said in a release.
The specialised seat industry, which had in earlier times adopted a just-in-time inventory strategy relying on consistent, steady and small batches of parts being available for production, is finding its way in a new era of demand backlog.
Germany-based RECARO Aircraft Seating acknowledged that supply chain at parts makers were “under challenge” and expanding them “needs careful management”.
There is huge market-growth due to significantly increased demand, said RECARO’s global marketing director Monica Fischer, who added the company is “experiencing and forecasting two-digit growth for the upcoming years”.
“We have significantly increased manpower to successfully manage the growth and demand,” Fischer said.
But growth is complicated, too. Each seat configuration sought by airlines competing for business class passengers needs a separate certification, whether on an aircraft assembly line or as part of a retrofit program, she said.
RECARO estimates the business class segment will be growing over the next five years by an average of 14 per cent – against the global market growth for seats of about 10 per cent.
The company has expanded its production with a facility in Poland and ramped up test seat production capacity by 60 per cent.
The seat shortage compounds the pervasive shortfall of new aircraft being produced by Airbus and Boeing. As airline fleets age and the wait for new planes drags on, they have increasingly turned to cabin refurbishments.
Qantas announced plans last year to refurbish its 42 Boeing 737s, even as it takes delivery of its domestic replacement, the A321XLR.
The shortage of planes and seats has been so acute that Emirates took matters into its own hands and announced, late last year, a plan to build a seat production facility with Safran in Dubai.
The effort will seek to ensure that Emirates has no shortage of seats in coming years.
Emirates and Safran want to have the factory open by the end of 2027 “with the initial assembly of up to 1000 business class seats per year”.
So far, Australia’s airlines have not been greatly affected. Virgin said seats in its newly delivered Boeing 737 MAX-8 and Embraer E190-E2 aircraft seats were already certified.
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Chris Zappone is a senior reporter covering aviation and business. He is former digital foreign editor.Connect via X, Facebook or email.