LATAM drops long-haul first class
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
LATAM has announced it will remove first class seats from its long-haul flights to Europe and North America later this year.
The South American carriers, TAM and LAN, will only offer premium business and economy cabins on long-haul flights from 1 November.
It comes as both carriers plan to roll-out a new seat design on its Boeing 777s, with the aircraft to be fitted from the end of the year into mid-2015.
Martin Modarelli, commercial director UK & Nordics for the LATAM Group said the decision had come from rethinking its model.
“We will discontinue first class on our long-haul flights after analysing our load factors in the cabins and noticing an increase in our business class sales,” he explained. “By offering these two cabins we create a new position for ourselves and can offer a more personalised service with the same number of crew onboard.”
The carriers are now focused on delivering for the World Cup period, with the last amount of seats to be unveiled on Monday. These will be on sale for GBP784 per person return to Sao Paulo and GBP1,999 for business class.
“The World Cup is a very exciting opportunity for us. We hope there will be a knock-on effect afterwards as more people will be thinking about South America as a destination,” said Modarelli.
Sales for June are said to be four times above the average for the month, with LATAM expecting to carry half the domestic traffic after changing and adding flights to its itineraries. TAM is the only airline offering flights to all 12 host cities.
Comments are closed.