Emirates has won two major awards at the annual AirlineRatings.com Airline Excellence Awards for 2023.

The world's largest international airline was awarded Best In-Flight Entertainment and Best Premium Economy.

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This is the eighth year that Emirates has won Best IFE for its ICE system and the airline was one of the first to introduce seat-back videos for economy passengers back in the early 1990s.

Late in 2021 the airline introduced its new Premium Economy on a handful of newly delivered A380s and is now refitting a large number of A380s and then will do the same with some of its 777s.

Emirates is well into a massive two-year retrofit programme with 120 aircraft earmarked for a full cabin interior upgrade and the installation of the airline’s Premium Economy seats.

This ambitious multi-billion dollar investment is due for completion in 2025.

Trained teams will implement a consistent process for every aircraft – a team of engineers will first remove the window seats in Economy class, freeing up space for another team to remove the side panels of the cabin interiors. These panels will go straight to one of three purpose-built workshops to be laminated with Emirates’ latest colour tones. To make room for the 56 Premium Economy class seats, 88 Economy seats at the front of the main deck will be removed.

On the upper deck, Business and First Class seats will be dismantled and loaded onto a modified catering truck to lower them to the ground where other vehicles will shuttle them to bespoke workshops. Business Class seats will be repainted and re-upholstered with new leather at Emirates Engineering, while First Class seats will be sent to a specialist at Dubai World Central (DWC) for refurbishing. All carpets and floorings throughout the aircraft cabins will be replaced before the refurbished seats are re-installed.

As this award is announced all 67 A380s earmarked for the retrofit programme were due to be back in service and Emirates will then begin work on 53 of its Boeing 777s. By March 2025, all 120 retrofitted aircraft will be back in service.