Air New Zealand are going to be offering beds for economy class passengers, which they have called the Skynest. These are triple tier bunks that people can use during flight to have a lie down.
Being located far away from most places, the sectors the Kiwi airline operates are very long. Auckland to New York is around 17 hours in the air, which is quite some time to be sat upright in a seat.
Skynest Video
The announcement about the Skynest happened on 25 February 2020, which was right before everyone was locked down for the pandemic. That means it has been delayed a bit, as have so many things.
There’s plenty packed into the two minute video above. A lot of thought and design effort has gone into the concept, which is unsurprising as it takes up space that could potentially be used for other things.
All About The Skynest
Passengers will be able to book a four hour session in the Skynest. The duration has been determined by a person’s sleep cycle, which is typically 90 minutes. This will give people time to wind down, sleep and wake up. Inside is a USB port for device charging, a reading light and an air vent.
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- It’s all very mauve, but looks comfortable.
All six bunks will be occupied at the same time, so everyone inside is on the same four hour block. In between sessions will be a 30 minute period where the crew will change all the bedding and prepare for the next batch of sleepers.
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- Who gets top bunk?
People flying in economy and premium economy will be able to book a session in the Skynest. Pricing has not been finalised, but the airline has said they are thinking around NZ$400 to NZ$500 (€220 to €276 / US$245 to US$307 / £198 to £247). Seems reasonable enough to me!
Overall Thoughts
The Air New Zealand Skynest is expected to debut in September 2024 and should prove popular with economy class passengers. I know that if I was flying a long haul flight down the back that I’d give anything for a few hours to lay down.
Sitting upright for hours and hours is really tedious, to put it mildly, so this will be a gamechanger. It will be interesting to see how popular these are. With only six beds and only two or three four hour sessions possible on each flight, it means only 12 or 18 people will get to use them.
What do you think of the whole Skynest concept? Is it something you would be paying for? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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All images via Air New Zealand.
I’d rather see them improve their dreadful “business” class seats!
I’ve not had the experience of an Air New Zealand business class seat – what is wrong with it?
They are all angled facing the aisle…so when someone walks up the aisle…they see every single person sitting in each seat. Might be great for FA but not for the people sitting in the seats. Fortunately when I flew RT to NZ, they leased an EVA plane on the way over….so I avoided this for one of the flights.
I just checked the seating plans on aeroLOPA… good grief, I would absolutely despise that. Last thing I need is to be facing the aisle, both from a privacy perspective and also because I like to look out the window. Looks terrible!
In addition to the configuration being awful, there’s little storage space. The best seats are the last row. In the company video on this page you can see the flat table like surface between the seat and the bulkhead. It’s at least a place to set things.
A couple of positives, though. The crews on my HNL-AKL and AKL-YVR trips were pleasant and the food was OK. Also, the bedding (a decent, think pad and a good sized duvet) is some of the best I’ve experienced.
I see what you mean. I think Virgin Atlantic has the same seat for a lot of their fleet, though that is being replaced now. Great to hear the crew were really nice, not to mention the bedding. Hopefully if they switch seats for something else that they’ll keep that. Thanks for the heads up!