Air Canada – Signature Business Class (787)

Introduction

This is my review of Air Canada’s Signature Class seat, which is their Business Class product. I was sitting in 8A on my flight from Toronto to Dublin. Signature Class has a total of 8 rows on the 787-9 and 5 rows on the 787-8.

As I understand it, the seats are the same between 787 and 777.

I believe the Signature Class seat is a version of the Collins Aerospace Super Diamond, which is the same as the British Airways Club Suite.

The Layout

The Signature Class ‘suite’ is a 1-2-1 in a configuration, meaning everyone has aisle access.

Privacy

As I mentioned above, this seat does not have a door – in fact, ostensibly BA added the door, rather than Air Canada removed it!

With that said, I found the seat to be fairly private. For example, unlike the American Airlines Flagship seats, I could only see a small part of seat next to me – and I couldn’t see any of the person sat there.

The Seat

The seat itself is very comfortable for sitting and working.

Just like on the BA Club Suite, there is a small screen for seat control and positioning. There was no memory for the seats position, like there is on American Airlines’ Flagship seats.

One thing the seat did have, that the BA Club Suite didn’t is a massage feature! With that said, I didn’t find it to be that good – I couldn’t really feel it doing anything.

For eating/drinking/working/sleeping, I found the seat to be very comfortable and spacious.   

Table

The table ‘lives’ under the screen and folds out towards you, with a latch on the bottom to move it forward and backwards.

I tend to prefer these style of tables, as they can slide back towards the screen in the event of a bathroom break!  

The table is of a good size, and I found it to be fairly solid for eating and working at.

Storage

There wasn’t any useful storage that I could find.

There is cupboard under the side console, but this is only good for storing phones and small items.

Under the foot stool there was somewhere to put shoes. But that was it!

I always like to unpack when I sit down; laptop, chargers, work stuff, etc – but in this case I had to wait until we’d taken off. 

Charging/Power

Inside the magic flap there is a UK/Euro/US power socket. Interestingly, I’d noticed that Air Canada had mounted their sockets upside down, to stop the plugs grounding out on the bottom of the store.

Whilst on the one hand this means you can actually plug stuff in – on the other hand, it means that if the cable comes out of the bottom of the plug, you won’t be able to close the lid!

There is also a single USB socket, under the magic flap.

I have to admit being fairly frustrated as I wanted to charge my phone and watch at the same time, and for me, only 1 USB wasn’t enough.

Air Circulation

Unlike the Club Suite, the Signature seat has air conditioning nozzles above the seats. Horrah!

Conclusion

This is a seat I’d happy fly in on a regular basis. It’s very comfortable, relatively spacious, and generally good in quality – even on the longest of flights! For me, the issues are (a) charging; and (b) storage. Possibly a solution could be to mount the sockets on their side. I don’t think I can resolve the storage issue without a re-design!