British Airways to squeeze more passengers with 52 extra seats on Boeing 777 holiday jets

British Airways (BA) plans to squeeze more passengers adding extra 52 seats on to its Boeing 777 holiday jets. Under the scheme an extra seat would be added each row, which would take the total for the aircraft from 280 to 332. 

Currently, each row in the economy section had nine seats across, which in 2018 would increase to 10 on the aircraft, operating out of Gatwick.

This would increase the capacity of the economy cabin from 216 to 252 seats, the seats would not be any smaller, but the aisles would be narrower making cabins more claustrophobic.

The airline would also trim business-class cabin from 40 to 32 seats but the premium-economy cabin capacity would be doubled to 48 seats.

According to commentators, the change would come as passengers were getting bigger, which meant flying could be more uncomfortable.

Also longer queues could be expected for the toilets as there would now be only one for every 30 passengers as against one for 25 at present.

BA has faced increasing competition on routes to the US from the likes of budget operator, Norwegian, with the carrier looking to cur down fares in order to appear at the top of price comparison tables.

A BA spokesperson told Express.co.uk: ''We are flying more customers than ever before to our expanding network of destinations and to meet this demand, we are updating our 777 cabins to bring us into line with many of our competitors and allow us to offer even more low fares.

''As part of the update, we will also be fitting new entertainment systems with bigger screens and British Airways continues to offer customers a generous hand baggage allowance and complimentary food and drink on all our long-haul services.''