Air Canada’s upgraded Airbus A321: redefining the business travel experience
Air Canada introduces an upgraded Airbus A321 with cutting-edge cabin enhancements, including larger overhead bins, Bluetooth audio, real-time exterior cameras, and more, offering UK-based business travelers an elevated travel experience.
Air Canada has proudly introduced passengers to a new era of air travel comfort and technology, unveiling their first upgraded Airbus A321 with an entirely revamped interior and groundbreaking in-flight features. This milestone event promises to elevate the flying experience for UK-based business travellers.
The reimagined Airbus A321 boasts a series of innovative enhancements to ensure passengers enjoy unparalleled comfort and connectivity. Some of the key highlights of the cabin improvements include:
- Larger Overhead Bins: The latest Airbus Airspace XL design features the largest overhead bins in its class, ensuring ample storage for passengers’ belongings. These spacious bins will also be incorporated into the Airbus A321XLRs.
- Upgraded Seating: Business Class and Economy passengers will benefit from standardised seating designed to optimise personal space, enhance ergonomics, and provide more storage, ensuring a more comfortable journey.
- Bluetooth Audio: Air Canada’s new In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system offers Bluetooth-enabled seatback monitors, allowing passengers to connect their personal headsets while enjoying video on demand, live TV, podcasts, or music. This initiative aligns with Air Canada’s commitment to sustainability by reducing single-use headphone waste.
- New Exterior Cameras: Passengers can now enjoy real-time, high-definition views of their flight through a groundbreaking exterior camera system – a first for narrow-body aircraft.
- Full-Colour LED Mood Lighting: The new cabin lighting system can set different ambiences based on the time of day and phase of the flight.
- Fast and Reliable Wi-Fi: Enhanced satellite-based connectivity ensures passengers have access to high-speed internet during their journey.
- Power Options at Every Seat: All passengers can conveniently access power outlets, USB-A, and USB-C to keep their devices charged.
The new IFE system installed on the Airbus A321 and A320 fleets features Air Canada’s award-winning in-flight entertainment, offering the most extensive content of any airline in the Americas.
Passengers can also enjoy live TV on these flights, featuring popular channels such as BNN, CTV, LCN, RDS, TSN1, and TSN2.
The remaining 14 Airbus A321s and eight A320s in Air Canada’s fleet are set to undergo retrofitting from this autumn until the end of 2025.
With these upgrades, passengers will experience a consistent and elevated narrow-body cabin experience, in line with the quality offered on the Airbus A220 and Boeing 737 MAX aircraft that constitute the majority of Air Canada’s narrowbody fleet.
Air Canada is Canada’s largest airline and the country’s flag carrier. As a founding member of Star Alliance, it offers scheduled services to over 180 airports worldwide. The airline holds a Four-Star ranking from Skytrax and is committed to achieving a net-zero emissions goal from all global operations by 2050. Air Canada shares are publicly traded on the TSX in Canada and the OTCQX in the US.
In addition to enhancing passenger comfort and connectivity, the new cabin design will reduce the overall weight of the A321 by approximately 240 kilograms.
This weight reduction is expected to result in substantial fuel savings, estimated at more than 2.4 million litres, and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 4,185 Canadian homes.
For further information about these groundbreaking upgrades and how they will enhance your business travel experience, we invite you to get in touch with your Global Travel Account Manager.
