Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has unveiled the newly-equipped cabins of its five Airbus A340-300 aircraft with first, business and economy class seats, which already feature on its Boeing 777s, together with a new inflight entertainment system that includes internet connectivity.

Passengers are treated to a new cabin lighting concept on the refurbished A340 fleet.

“With the completion of our A340 cabin refurbishment programme we are further underlining our quality commitment, and now offer all our customers the same premium air travel experience, including inflight internet connectivity, on all our long-haul flights,” says SWISS chief commercial officer, Tamur Goudarzi Pour.

SWISS operates its Airbus A340s on services between Zurich and Boston, Johannesburg and Shanghai. The A340 will also be deployed on SWISS’s new Zurich-Osaka (Japan) route, on which service will commence on 1 March 2020.

SWISS concluded the cabin refurbishment programme for its A340 aircraft fleet in mid-January.

The refurbishment was conducted in a series of work phases that are closely coordinated. The first step was to strip the aircraft completely: all the seats, galleys and toilets were removed, along with the baggage bins and the internal panelling.

Once all the new wiring had been laid and tested, work began on installing the new seats, galleys and toilets. During the test flight, the new cabin interior was put through its paces in both normal and extreme flying conditions to ensure that everything worked faultlessly.

A cabin refurbishment of this kind takes five to six weeks per aircraft. It’s a complex interplay involving various participants. The work was being performed at Elbe Flugzeugwerke in Dresden, Germany.

Elbe Flugzeugwerke had around 100 employees assigned to the programme, from aircraft engineers and electronics technicians through to cabin interior specialists.

SWISS invested around 100 million Swiss francs in the cabin refurbishment of its five A340-300s.