Some thoughts on flyDubai's new business class suites

Coinciding with Arabian Travel Market, the large annual travel industry event in Dubai, flyDubai presented its latest flavour of business class, which it calls “The Business Suite”.

This is an interesting development since it is one more step in the direction of flyDubai’s long unfolding “premiumization”. In fact, one of the things that struck me when I first flew flyDubai is how good both business class and economy (with extras) were. I was expecting a sort of glorified low-costish experience and, in fact, what I came across was a pretty good product on its own right.

flyDubai new business cabins, whose roll out is going to start on the Boeing 737 MAX fleet before the end of 2023, feature 10 seats with an outer shell and side walls (for added privacy) and direct access to the aisle, as well as many of the features that you expect from a latest generation business class seat, such as lie flat seats, own electronic device IFE synchronization, usb and electric sockets and storage space.

By the way, the seats are made by Safran, while the concept is the work of JPA Design.

Another interesting aspect and one that flyDubai boasts about in its announcement is the fact that this is a design conceived to provide passengers on single aisle aircraft the same levels of comfort that can be expected on wide-bodies.

This is a trend that was brought up by several industry experts I spoke with recently, for example, for this article I wrote for AeroTime about seat trends and this recent podcast episode about the same topic. With single-aisle aircraft such as the Airbus A321neo LR and XLR and the different versions of the Boeing 737 MAX flying ever longer segments on a regular basis.

This fits well with the strategy of Emirates’ “little brother” (the two Dubai carriers are technically separate, but they are both within the umbrella of the same group and act with a degree in coordination in areas such as network planning). While Emirates is a 100% wide-body airline, flyDubai complements that by operating a 100% narrow-body fleet to many more niche markets within a 5-6h flight radius of Dubai (which means basically anywhere from Helsinki to Bangkok).

The launch of "The Business Suite” adds one more layer of sophistication to flyDubai’s offering, but to provide a point of reference I thought it was a good moment to bring back to the fore this flight review of flyDubai’s business class that I did in 2019 (note that although this flight report is relatively recent, flyDubai has kept upgrading its business class product since!)

Flight Review: flydubai Boeing 737 MAX Business Class (II) (2019)