5 ms·

I'm often surprised just how much more expensive premium economy tickets are. I get that some people are willing to pay more for extra legroom, free/better food

I'm often surprised just how much more expensive premium economy tickets are. I get that some people are willing to pay more for extra legroom, free/better food and drink and so on, but the cost is often 5x that of standard economy. To me, that seems a ridiculous markup to pay for slightly more comfort for only a few hours, but I guess it works because airlines sell and fill these seats.

viraptor 9y ago
> for slightly more comfort for only a few hours If it's only a few hours, sure, not a big difference. But when I fly Melbourne-London, premium economy is a difference between being a zombie for the next 48h, or arriving just tired. How much is the day after travel worth for you?
- grkvlt 9y ago
  yeah, for TATL (LHR to JFK minimum) or longer (SFO etc) travel, there is a quantifiable difference in comfort for premium economy, at least in BA which i normally fly. although, i actually had a reasonable flight in economy from EWR to EDI recently in United recently, but only because i ended up with a row of three seats to myself!
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  This is the calculus that you need to make in business travel, even at startups. You're flying out your CEO on a business deal to Asia, on a 10 hour flight. You can save $3k by flying him/her on Economy, but what is the hidden cost to the business by having him/her be a zombie for the next 48 hours while he/she has to negotiate a deal?
mseebach 9y ago
It sounds like you've hit some unfortunate combination of deeply discounted economy and/or expensive flexible fare premium to get to that markup -- for 5x you can generally get into business class on long haul flights. I've flown premium economy quite a bit, and generally the markup seems correlate pretty well with the difference in area (ie on the order of 50% markup for 50% more space, considering both pitch and width).

viraptor 9y ago

> for slightly more comfort for only a few hours If it's only a few hours, sure, not a big difference. But when I fly Melbourne-London, premium economy is a difference between being a zombie for the next 48h, or arriving just tired. How much is the day after travel worth for you?

grkvlt 9y ago
yeah, for TATL (LHR to JFK minimum) or longer (SFO etc) travel, there is a quantifiable difference in comfort for premium economy, at least in BA which i normally fly. although, i actually had a reasonable flight in economy from EWR to EDI recently in United recently, but only because i ended up with a row of three seats to myself!
hkmurakami 9y ago
This is the calculus that you need to make in business travel, even at startups. You're flying out your CEO on a business deal to Asia, on a 10 hour flight. You can save $3k by flying him/her on Economy, but what is the hidden cost to the business by having him/her be a zombie for the next 48 hours while he/she has to negotiate a deal?

mseebach 9y ago

It sounds like you've hit some unfortunate combination of deeply discounted economy and/or expensive flexible fare premium to get to that markup -- for 5x you can generally get into business class on long haul flights. I've flown premium economy quite a bit, and generally the markup seems correlate pretty well with the difference in area (ie on the order of 50% markup for 50% more space, considering both pitch and width).