TokyoHaneda.com – Your Gateway to Japan

Air New Zealand (NZ) the flag carrier of New Zealand, based in Auckland, recently awarded Airline of the Year 2010 by the Air Transport World Global Airline Awards, is making headlines again, following its wild and highly successful safety campaign in May last year, which featured well-formed cabin attendants wearing nothing but body paint, now in an attempt to change what many would hope economy travel should be, with its “economy class flat and level beds”.

“The days of sitting in economy and yearning to lie down and sleep are gone” said its CEO. And now the dream has become a reality, transforming a new era of inflight service with its groundbreaking long haul product named “Skycouches”. Skycouches are formed out of three economy seats abreast that fold out to create a lie-flat space, complete with full size pillows, stretching all the way to the seat-back in front, was developed by the airline’s in-house designers and engineers, with a total of 22 beds altogether, will take up the first 11 rows in the economy cabin of the carrier’s new B777-300 planes.

Passengers will pay the standard economy fare for two seats and receive the third seat for about half price. Skycouches is going on sale, operating between between Auckland and Los Angeles from December 2010 and Auckland and London from April 2011. All Asian, North American and UK services will feature the seats by around 2012.

Have a press release and would like us to publish it? TokyoTomo welcomes your submissions. If you would like to submit your new product, service or other industrial news for review by our editors, please write to pr@tokyotomo.com TokyoTomo does not necessarily guarantee coverage of every new product or release however as long as it is relevant to travel in Japan, we will try to include them.