The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023–2025
Lufthansa's Allegris replaces the single business seat with five tailored seat types
Allegris replaces the one-size business seat with five variations — long beds, living areas, workspaces, couple seats and suites — every one with aisle access.
Lufthansa · Pearson Lloyd
What it had to solve
Lufthansa wanted to redefine premium travel for today's diverse passengers, who fly solo or with colleagues, friends or family, for business or leisure. A conventional cabin gave every one of them the same single seat and the same compromise.
How it works
Business class has usually meant one seat type offered to every passenger. Lufthansa's Allegris starts from the opposite premise: premium travelers fly solo, with colleagues, friends or family, for business or leisure — so a cabin should offer seats, not a seat.
Design agency Pearson Lloyd built Allegris from the ground up as a multi-seat business class with five distinct seat variations: extra-long beds, extended living areas, workspaces, enhanced privacy with suite doors, couple seats, and a seat with a side-mounted baby bassinet for parents. Every variation keeps direct aisle access, so the extra choice never costs the convenience everyone shares.
The result reframes what a business cabin is: not one optimized product but a portfolio, where each passenger picks the configuration matching their journey and their companions. The D&AD awards archive records the design with Pearson Lloyd as entrant for brand Lufthansa; the page carries no audience or sales numbers.
Why it lands
- A family of five seats lets each passenger optimize for sleep, work, privacy or company instead of accepting one compromise for everyone.
- Aisle access in every variation means added choice does not trade away the convenience all travelers share.
- Couple seats and a baby-bassinet seat treat business travel as social and family time, not only solo work time.
- Designing from the ground up lets options such as suite doors and extra-long beds be engineered into the structure rather than added later.
What it did
Allegris is presented as the first ground-up multi-seat business class, shifting the design question from 'one best seat' to 'which seat fits this trip and company'. The D&AD awards archive keeps the work as a product-design reference; no sales or rollout figures appear on the record.
What you can take
When users differ, do not average them into one product: build a small family of variants around one shared promise, so each person chooses the trade-off that fits their trip.
Since then
The D&AD archive page records Allegris with Pearson Lloyd as entrant company and Lufthansa as brand, and carries no fleet, sales or rollout figures. What endures is the framing: Lufthansa introduced the cabin as one for everyone, and the design brief changed from finding a single best seat to asking which seat fits each traveler.
Sources
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