Taking an in-depth look into the seat frequently cited as the best business class seat in the sky was always going to be an unusual feature article here on The Up Front.
In reality, it’s two reviews in one, not of brand new seats and cabins, but of All Nippon Airways’ main two current longhaul business class products — plus what the experience onboard can tell us about the forthcoming The Room FX sofa-style suite for the airline’s 787-9s, and what it will mean for ANA and the rest of the world of business class.
I flew Paris to Tokyo Haneda on ANA’s current 787-9 business class seat, the Safran Skylounge that the airline marks as a product from 2010 (which I understand refers to the 777 version) and 2016 (which, again, I understand means the 787 version).
Full disclosure: ANA flew this journalist to Tokyo and back for The Room FX’s Tokyo launch, a visit to its customer experience studio, for round-table interviews, and to review its current business class products — as with any airline-provided travel we accept, with unrestricted editorial independence.
I then returned from Haneda to London Heathrow on ANA’s current 777-300ER business class seat, The Room, which ANA débuted in 2019.
The Room based on Safran’s Fusio platform and I’ll call it The Room OG (for “original”) throughout the piece to differentiate it from the forthcoming The Room FX seat, which Safran calls The Room FX as a product.
The Room OG started replacing the Skylounge seat on the 777 from 2019, and The Room FX is due to début later this year.
During these flights, and during multiple conversations in Tokyo with ANA executives, including then-cabin products and services director Maki Katsunori and executive vice president of customer experience Omae Keiji, I had a series of questions in mind.
What are The Room OG’s strengths and weaknesses? How much better is The Room OG than the Skylounge it replaced on the 777, and what can ANA learn from the 787 Skylounge product for The Room FX? How does The Room OG stand up in 2026, and is it still the world’s best business class? How will The Room FX differ from The Room OG, and how will compare within the ANA stable? And, finally, what about prospective soft product improvements once The Room, FX and OG, reach critical longhaul fleet mass?
The Room’s original version is firmly still the best business class product in the sky
The Room OG’s main strengths come from the sheer amount of space given over to the passenger, the way that the unique forwards-backwards stagger works, and the doors.
When I first saw this seat — as the Fusio platform — on the 2015 Aircraft Interiors Expo stand of what was then Zodiac Aerospace, and is now Safran Seats, it genuinely stood out, to the extent that my photo archive naming for it then included the note “Qatar Superbusiness seat?”
Fusio is the most spacious business class seat in production, and indeed since the introduction of what would become business class in the late 1970s. (I am not counting, in that statement, first class seats declassified or reclassified as business class, or studio class products.)
