Dubai: Emirates airline is in the “final stages” as it prepares to launch its new luxury bedroom product that is to be rolled out on its Airbus A380 and Boeing 777s, a senior airline executive said on Sunday.

The new premium product will be “more like a private railway cabin” (to fit one passenger) and will initially be launched on the airline’s A380s and later introduced on the 777 fleet, Shaikh Majid Al Mualla, divisional senior vice president of the Commercial Operations Centre at Emirates airline, told reporters in Dubai, on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) conference.

Emirates is the largest operator of the world’s largest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, with 60 [aircraft] in its fleet from an order of 140. It is also the largest customer of Boeing’s new long-range 777x jet.

Al Mualla said the new product will be rolled out across the existing fleet. He declined to state who had designed the product or how much it would cost passengers but said more details would be made available shortly.

It will be “more commercially viable for passengers,” Al Mualla said when asked about pricing.

Emirates executives have been hinting for the past 12 months that they are close to unveiling their new bedroom product. In May 2014, Emirates President, Tim Clark, told the Wall Street Journal that the airline was in the advanced stages of launching on-board bedrooms.

It’s about privacy, Al Mualla said on Sunday, who last year told Gulf News that the new product would be “based on our [first class] cabin but more as a room concept”.

Competition

Gulf carriers have been vying for the title of “world’s most luxurious airline”. Last year, Etihad Airways unveiled “The Residence,” a three-room suite that comes with its very own Savoy-trained butler, for its fleet of 10 A380s. A one-way journey from Abu Dhabi to London cost $20,000 (Dh73,400) for up to two passengers. Qatar Airways, which markets itself as the “world’s only five-star airline”, argues that its business class is better than most airlines premium product. Meanwhile, last year it launched a “business class only” Doha-London route.

Emirates currently offers private suites in its first class, that cost around $500,000 each to produce, as well as on board showers and a bar for its first and business class passengers. The new product will first be rolled out on high load factor first class routes, Al Mualla said. While not confirming which would be the first route, he said that London is popular among its first class passengers.