The airline was forced to rebalance planes thanks to these first class seats

Is flying first class worth the weight?

Swiss International Air Lines is being forced to rebalance its planes because its new first-class seats are too heavy, CNN reported.

Swiss – Switzerland’s flag carrier – was set to install the new seats, known as Swiss Senses, as part of a revamp to improve the passenger experience, which was supposed to debut in the winter of 2025-2026.

The jumbo seats include six-foot walls and sliding closing doors for each 37-square-foot suite, giving passengers a complete Swiss-made experience.

As these seats were in the front of the Airbus A330, they ultimately made the aircraft heavy. The airline would have to put a massive “balancing plate” on the back of the plane to balance it.

Once the new interior upgrades are installed and weighed, the balance plates will be installed and “remain aboard these aircraft until other options can be developed” while the airline searches for possible replacement technology.

The plate will not be visible to economy passengers.

The airline’s current first-class seats weigh 452 pounds, and the final weight of the new seats “will not be known until [they are] installed,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Industry trends show that first and business class seats are getting heavier to provide more privacy for passengers as economy seats are getting lighter, Swiss said in a statement to CNN, and “these two opposing trends are reversing the center of gravity of the aircraft in which such seats are installed.”

Although first class upgrades are coming to the airline’s Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s, only the Airbus A330s are facing this problem because it is already a heavy aircraft to begin with.

The spokesman noted that the renovations came in response to customers telling the airline “in uncertain conditions that it is time to modernize the cabin interiors of our long-haul aircraft, and in particular the Airbus A330-300”.

Swiss has tested shedding weight from other aspects of the plane by potentially not adding sliding doors and trimming the first class cabin from eight to four seats. They have also considered adding more economy seats to even it out, but the airline nixed the idea to maintain passenger comfort.

The airline denied this was a “planning error”, saying they used “rough estimates” of weight, which will not be confirmed until the plane is fully completed.