Korean Air’s new 777, 787 business class suites

Korean Air is joining the post-pandemic push for a fresh take on business class, with new suites coming to both the Boeing 787-10 and 777 fleet.

The SkyTeam member’s plans were revealed in a regulatory filing made with the US Department of Transportation, which – while scant on hard details – confirmed the “new business class suite seat design” would debut on the Korean flag-carrier’s Boeing 787-10 jets, the first of which is expected to arrive in October 2023 and take wing in November.

These same suites will later be added to the long-range Boeing 777-300ER fleet – and they’ll even be the same physical size, rather than being a wider version to make the most of the 777’s wider cabin, so passengers and crew will instead see the refurbished 777s sporting wider aisles.

The airline’s DoT submission redacted details such as the suite’s manufacturer and the specific model, as well as the layout, for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

Korean Air’s current flagship business class is based on the Apex suite, but expectations are that the new 777 and 787-10 business class suites will follow a more conventional 1-2-1 layout with sliding privacy doors.

Korean Air's current Boeing 787 business class.

The new business class has been in the works for some time, but like that of many other carriers – including Turkish Airlines’ own 777 suites – the program was stalled in early 2020.

“Currently, we are testing designs (and) talking to suppliers,” Korean Air Chairman and CEO Walter Cho told Executive Traveller on the sidelines of the World Air Transport Summit in Seoul in mid-2019.

Cho also indicated the airline’s new business class seat would also replace the current first class and business class seating mix on selected aircraft, moving instead to a single, larger and much better business class cabin – also a move being adopted by several airlines, among them American Airlines and Qatar Airways.