Airline forced to rebalance planes because first class seats are too heavy

The new first class seats are too heavy for the Swiss A330-300 aircraft. Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters via CNN Newsource

The desire to fly in style weighs heavily on most of us – but for some first-class flyers it weighs the heaviest of all.

Swiss – Switzerland’s flag carrier – is having to make alterations to some of its aircraft because new first class seats, due to be installed as a much needed revamp, are proving to be too heavy.

The new jumbo seats on the Airbus A330s – which include six-foot walls and locking doors for each suite – are seated at the front of the plane, making the aircraft nose-heavy. Swiss will have to fit a massive “balancing plate” at the back of the plane to recentre the balance of the aircraft.

The new seats, called “Swiss Senses,” were announced in 2023 for a debut of winter 2025-2026. The airline has promised a full made-in-Switzerland experience, with up to 37 square foot “suites” in first class with sliding doors and walls shielding passengers from their fellow mortals.

In a statement, Swiss said that as industry trends mean that first and business class seats get heavier (to provide more privacy) and economy seats get lighter, “these two contrasting trends are changing the centre of gravity of the aircraft in which such seats are installed.”

It said that aircraft types that tend towards being nose-heavy anyway are particularly affected – and unfortunately the A330 is one of those. The airline will also be retrofitting Boeing 777s with the new seats – but without the same issue. Its Airbus A340s will not be getting the new seats.

On the A330s, Swiss will therefore be adding a “balancing plate” to correct the centre of gravity. It will be calculated once the new cabin interiors are installed and weighed precisely, and will “remain aboard these aircraft until other options can be developed,” the spokesperson said, adding that the airline will be scouting technology that could replace the plate.

The plate – positioned at the back of the aircraft – will not be visible to passengers in economy. The airline cannot confirm its exact weight, said the spokesperson, as they will have to wait for the final weight of the seats in order to calculate the counterweight.

Unusually for a European airline, Swiss offers a first-class cabin on all its longhaul flights. It was voted best European airline first class in the 2024 World Travel Awards.

The new, weighty interiors were driven by customer feedback, said the spokesperson, who told the airline “in no uncertain terms that it is time we modernized the cabin interiors of our longhaul aircraft, and especially our Airbus A330-300s.” The aircraft currently operate routes from Switzerland to the Middle East, and U.S. and Canada east coast.

The airline has tried to reduce adding weight elsewhere, by not planning for sliding doors in business class seats, as other airlines have brought in, and by trimming the first class cabin from eight seats to four. The spokesperson said that adding more seats in economy to add weight at the back of the plane had been considered, but rejected to preserve comfort in the cheaper seats.

Swiss denied it was a “planning error,” saying that while planning the cabin they used “rough estimates” of weight, which have now grown as manufacturing begins and will be confirmed once the new seats are installed.

Its partner airline Lufthansa has also committed to the new seats for its revamped “Allegris” cabins, but a spokesperson for the German flag carrier confirmed that Lufthansa won’t be retrofitting any A330s, so won’t have the same issue.

Flying first class is, of course, the most environmentally damaging way of flying commercial. The heavier seats and maximized space means that it is far less efficient than flying in a regular economy seat.

The current first class seats on Swiss weigh 205 kilograms or 452 pounds. The final weight of the new seats “will not be known until [they are] installed,” said the spokesperson.