Air New Zealand starting trends with the worlds first economy 'Skynest'

Saturday 02 July 2022

Air New Zealand has a habit of capturing the world's attention with their quirky 'storytelling' inflight safety videos, but what's really stealing the world's attention is the new Economy Skynest.

Air New Zealand’s incoming fleet of eight Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, arriving in 2024, will look vastly different to anything the airline – or any airline, for that matter – has done before. We’ve seen concepts like this floating around for the past few years for sure, and some would consider this the aviation industry’s worst kept secret, but only today has Air NZ confirmed that it will be the world’s first airline to introduce the Skynest for economy passengers. Essentially, this means sleep pods in the sky – ones that wouldn’t look out of place in a typical Japanese pod hotel. The Air New Zealand Skynest, in addition to a brand new Business Premier Luxe product, represents the most substantial cabin overhaul in 20 years – dubbed the “Cabin of Possibility.”

As per an announcement made by Air New Zealand this morning, the airline spent 170,000 hours of hard R&D to arrive at this point, geared towards providing “the best sleep in the sky” with a boost in both privacy and space. Responding to customer feedback on the obvious importance of sleep and comfort, the carrier decided to pull the trigger on the luxe bunk bed concept, which looks to be included in economy class alongside Economy Skycouch, Economy Stretch and regular Economy seats.

Economy Skynest will comprise just six sleep pods for passengers who will most likely be paying a premium for the opportunity to catch some lie-flat shut-eye during a flight on an Air NZ Dreamliner on a service such as the upcoming non-stop Auckland-New York route.