BA A380 WT Arm rests
 

Flew back from LAX today and got 4 seats to myself, excellent I thought only discover that when I wanted to spread out the arm rests only retract to about 45o or so. Is this the norm on all BA LH fleet or just the A380.

As I understand it, this is the 'new' economy seat that will introduced across the range through new purchases and refurbishment of old airframes.

The 'great idea' was to make the seat a teen weeny bit wider (about 3/4 of an inch, I think) My guess is this is because the boys and girls of BA marketing realised that web sites were now comparing seat widths and they looked bad.

However, in order to give the extra width to the pax - but without increasing the overall dimension of the seat - they had the brilliant idea of making the arm rest only retract part way. This is because the wider seat does not permit the arm rest to go up.

Ta-Da! Another triumph of being able to advertise 'wider seats' but not mentioning that if you are two people (or a family) in a bank of 3 or 4 seats - you can no longer do what pax have doing for decades.

I sit to be corrected on my guess'. (And my desk chair is more comfortable than the Y chair!)

Yep, I asked on here about this last year after flying with my family and being unable to use all three seats in the manner we've always been used to.

The seat back is wider, so the armrest is thinner at the bottom and can't go fully up anymore.

For this reason, I will never fly a BA380 again, unless they revise it in a future refit. Awful design decision.

Was this an isolated case or was the aircraft relatively empty all over?

I was right at the back of the top deck. I deliberately do that and chose an inside (not aisle) seat and invariably get all 4 seats to my self. The guy in front had all four seats too. There rear cabin up top only has 4 or 5 rows. Don't think the plane was all that busy.

This could also be helpful from the "unforeseen consequences" perspective as it should prevent "persons of size" occupying part of the seat of the person next to them. Of course they can´t be expected to pay for two seats if they cannot occupy two.

Be careful with that if you plan on having a quiet flight! That small cabin on the upper deck is also where BA tend to pre-allocate group bookings. Can be party central up there.