Alaska Airlines has today made a slew of passenger experience announcements , which I’m covering across several posts. The theme is simple, and it includes focusing on the premium experience (as is the standard in the industry nowadays).

In this post I’d like to cover what I consider to be the biggest announcement, which is that Alaska plans to install flat bed seats on some narrow body planes for the first time. Separately, I’ve covered details about the new premium economy cabin , Hawaiian’s A330 retrofits , the new Alaska Aurora Lounge Seattle , and the new Hawaiian Lounge Honolulu .

Up until now, Alaska Airlines has countered the trend by not introducing flat bed seats on any narrow body aircraft. That will finally be changing.

Alaska Airlines has 168 Boeing 737 MAX 10s on order , and the plan is for at least 25 of those planes to be in a special, premium configuration. The 737 MAX 10 is the largest variant of the 737 family, so airlines have a bit more space to play with.

The airline plans to introduce flat bed seats with direct aisle access on these planes. Specifically, they’ll be reverse herringbone seats, so that’s a huge competitive advantage, as other airlines introduce herringbone seats on narrow body planes. The seats will be branded as “Aurora Suites,” which is how Alaska plans to generally brand its long haul business class product going forward.

The airline intends to have 12 business class suites on these planes, spread across six rows, in a 1-1 configuration (oddly the renderings actually show 14 seats, but the airline insists it’ll be 12). This appears to be the Ascent narrow body product from Elevate Aircraft Seating . I don’t believe this is in service on any airline as of now, so that’s pretty cool ( assuming certification isn’t an issue !).

On top of that, these 737 MAXs will be equipped with 12 premium economy seats, spread across three rows, in a 2-2 configuration. This is part of a larger rollout of premium economy at Alaska, which will be branded as Premium Reserve. This cabin will be coming to select Boeing 737 MAXs, as well as all Boeing 787s and Airbus A330s.

While Alaska is sharing renderings of the new economy seats on the premium 737 MAXs, there’s interestingly no look at the seat backs. I would assume that we’ll finally see seat back entertainment on these planes in economy, but that’s not evident based on the renderings. Maybe the airline hasn’t yet decided for sure?