How to Find Your Business Class Seat Before Your Flight
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How to Find Your Business Class Seat Before Your Flight

2022 Finnair New Business Class A350 0007

Airlines constantly refurbish and upgrade their fleet. At the same time, new aircraft configurations appear and the old ones are retired. So how do you find which exact business class seat you will have on your upcoming flight?

Before the booking

If you are flying on Oneworld carriers, you should check our business class seat guide before booking your trip. That way you can roughly see what to expect on different airlines. For example, on Qatar Airways almost all of the business class seats are really good (read our reviews). The same goes with Finnair, their brand new AirLounge seat (read our review) provides excellent privacy and a sofa-like business class experience, and also the old Zodiac Cirrus III seat (read our review) is very good. However, British Airways still has the ancient ying-yang seat on about 50% of their aircraft, so you should be really careful when booking flights on BA (read our review of the old seat).

British Airways Club Suite Routes (August 2022)

List of British Airways destinations with the best chances to get the new Club Suite seat. All flights to/from London Heathrow (LHR):

  • Abuja (ABV)
  • Atlanta (ATL)
  • Austin (AUS)
  • Bahrain (BAH)
  • Bangalore (BLR)
  • Boston (BOS)
  • Capetown (CPT)
  • Chicago (ORD)
  • Dallas (DFW)
  • Denver (DEN)
  • Dubai (DXB)
  • Johannesburg (JNB)
  • Kuwait (KWI)
  • Las Vegas (LAS)
  • Los Angeles (LAX)
  • Maldives (MLE)
  • Miami (MIA)
  • Mumbai (BOM)
  • Nassau (NAS)
  • New York (JFK)
  • New York (EWR)
  • Phoenix (PHX)
  • Riyadh (RUH)
  • São Paulo (GRU)
  • Seattle (SEA)
  • Toronto (YTO)
  • Vancouver (YVR)

Business Class Seat Configuration examples (British Airways)

Business Class Seat configuration - British Airways
Examples of British Airways seating configurations. RIGHT: The old ying-yang business class – very easy to differentiate from the new one. LEFT: One of the new business class configurations with Club Suite seat.
Screenshot from SeatGuru

Finnair New Business Class (AirLounge) Routes (August 2022)

The rollout of Finnair’s new business class seat is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

  • Singapore
  • New York
  • Dallas
  • Chicago
  • Hong Kong (coming soon)

Read our review of Finnair’s AirLounge business class seat

Business Class Seat Configuration examples (Finnair)

Business Class Seat configuration - Finnair AirLounge
Examples of Finnair seating configurations. RIGHT: A330 New business class configuration – easy to differentiate from the old one. MIDDLE: One of the A350 new business class configurations. LEFT: One of the old business class configurations. Remember to check the number of the seats as otherwise it might be difficult to know if the aircraft has the new business class seat or not. The new seat has 28/30/43 passenger configurations.
Screenshot from ExpertFlyer

Qatar Airways QSuite Business Class Routes (August 2022)

Even though all of Qatar’s business class seats are very good, you might want to choose their QSuite option, if it’s available. Getting one can be quite tricky since Qatar Airways is famous for its last-minute equipment swaps. The destination list of potential QSuite routes is long, but note that the seat might be available only on some of the daily flights – and not even every day. 

  • Adelaide (ADL)
  • Amsterdam (AMS) 
  • Bangalore (BLR)
  • Bangkok (BKK) 
  • Boston (BOS)
  • Cairo (CAI)
  • Cape Town (CPT)
  • Chicago (ORD)
  • Dallas (DFW)
  • Dubai (DXB)
  • Frankfurt (FRA)
  • Houston (IAH)
  • Johannesburg (JNB)
  • Kuwait (KWI)
  • London (LHR)
  • Los Angeles (LAX)
  • Manchester (MAN)
  • Manila (MNL) 
  • Melbourne (MEL)
  • Miami (MIA)
  • Montreal (YUL)
  • Mumbai (BOM)
  • New Delhi (DEL)
  • New York (JFK)
  • Paris (CDG)
  • Philadelphia (PHL)
  • San Francisco (SFO)
  • Sao Paulo (GRU)
  • Seattle (SEA)
  • Seoul (ICN)
  • Singapore (SIN)
  • Sydney (SYD)
  • Tokyo (NRT) (Coming later 2022)
  • Washington (IAD)

Read our review of QSuite business class seat

During the booking

During the booking phase, you can usually choose your seats and in that view, you can quite easily determine which seat configuration you are supposed to get.

You can use services like Expertflyer or Seatguru to check the business class seat configuration and compare it to the one you are shown during the booking process.

After the booking

Even if you managed to book the seat you were looking for, equipment changes are unfortunately common. Usually, airlines don’t even bother to inform you about the change. To avoid confusion, you can use Expertflyer to set seat alerts that will notify you in case of a plane swap. Expertflyer can also be used for monitoring preferred seat availability.