Today as I was on Twitter one of my followers tweeted about a website about the new Air Canada 787. My first impression is that I AM IMPRESSED! (For one who doesn’t fly long-haul economy, anyways :P).

Air Canada has released details about their 787 and a seat map as well. Here are my thoughts about the new travel experience:

Air Canada 787 Business Class:

Air Canada has decided to go with a reverse herringbone layout in the business class in their 787, and there are going to be twenty seats in the cabin. It looks stunning and tremendously better than the old and dated herringbone that they still have in the majority of the planes. Awesome!

They’re also rebranding Executive First to International Business Class. It looks like they’re getting new duvets and amenity kits which also look quite nice (in the pictures they aren’t the same as the ones I got back in August). The only other 787 carrier which features reverse herringbone business class is Qatar, and trip reports of that product have been really nice to read. There are also lots of new goodies including a espresso machine!

Other cabins in the Air Canada 787:

The Premium economy cabin actually looks pretty decent, in a 2-3-2 configuration. It’s currently not redeemable with Aeroplan so I shudder when they will put a new award level in, because it naturally means another devaluation. *shudders*

I’d say for the average traveller economy class does not look very appealing, with 31″ seat pitch and 17″ seat pitch in a 3-3-3 nine across configuration. Everyone is going to be crammed like sardines… at least the IFE looks nice.

Booking the Air Canada 787

As always, with Aeroplan if you are booking on Air Canada, you will incur fuel surcharges. I wrote about how to reduce fuel surcharge when using Aeroplan. The Aeroplan award chart is here. As the Air Canada 787 will be flying on the YYZ-TLV route starting next July, seats are already available for paid bookings as well as award bookings.

Unfortunately, it seems that Air Canada currently is not releasing business class seats, but hopefully they will soon:

The Air Canada 787 will first be flying Toronto – Tel-Aviv next July and will expand to other routes I’d assume that are flown by the 767’s. I cannot wait for them to open new routes with this plane and I am very excited to fly on one of these planes!

As there are only 20 business class seats, it looks like eupgrades will be much harder to clear, although for anyone not top-tier you’ll have to pay a co-pay to upgrade. Economy Class doesn’t look so great, although the improved cabin pressure should help travel. As well larger windows, and higher humidity levels should help. I’m really excited for new routes to launch too as the fuel efficiency and range of the plane is much better than the 767’s it will replace.

For more details, Air Canada has released a new website for their dreamliner, which you can see at this link. Here is also the link to the seatmap.

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