Embraer Monday at the Farnborough Air Show revealed its new interior designed the for E-Jet E2, the re-engined and re-winged airplane scheduled to enter service in 2018 through 2020 in the 195, 190 and 175 subtypes each year.

We had the opportunity to preview the prototype for this interior in May while visiting EMB’s Florida offices, but the viewing was put off the record in anticipation of the FAS reveal. We were impressed.

The YouTube video linked above shows the most notable feature at about 1:45: the staggered first class section. For anyone who has flown the current generation E-Jet, you will know that first class is 1×2, a reduction in the 2×2 coach seating. We’ve always complained that the overhead bin on the one-seat side was reduced to a fairly useless size (we joked that it barely could accommodate a water bottle). The design for first now allows for 2×2 seating.

Embraer’s E-Jet E2 has a new interior design using a staggered first class section, permitting 2×2 seating with leg room rivaling international first class.

The E-Jet E2 first class is more spacious than US domestic first class, and gives the spacious feeling of international first class before any reclines into a bed.

The E2’s F class actually will make US traditional mainline first class inferior; it’s superior to anything offered by Airbus, Boeing or Bombardier. How airlines offering mainline F class will react to a “regional” jet (though EMB doesn’t consider the E-Jet to be a regional airliner) offering better F configuration remains to be seen.

Embraer hasn’t stopped there. Although the original generation E-Jet offered ample overhead bin space, the E2 increases bin space by 40%. When you consider that Boeing just announced larger overhead bins for its 737NG and MAX–even greater than the Boeing Sky Interior–and Bombardier designed larger bins for its CSeries, OEMs are focusing more and more on passenger experience than ever before.

• Exceptions to this would be that Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer offer what we call shoe-horn configurations, jamming exit-limited capacity into their airplanes to please the operators but not the passengers.
• Airbus stubbornly refused for the longest time to [publicly] acknowledge the need to refresh its A320 interior. The interior was refreshed in 2007, and while it remains clean-looking and very functional, Boeing announced the 737’s Sky Interior in 2009 and interiors company Zodiac/HeathTechna designed 737 and A320 interiors that provided more overhead space and a refreshed look. Airbus now says it is looking at an A320 interior refresh some two years or more after the A320neo enters service next year.

Embraer’s E2 is progressing through design freezes. In the meantime, a mid-term update, if you want to call it that, began entering service this year. This is the E1, which includes 6% better fuel burn and an interior upgrade. The original design is now “just” the E-Jet.

EMB announced at FAS the first major E2 order since program launch at the Paris Air Show last year, a 50+50 deal with US carrier Trans States Airlines for the E-175 E2.