In the Back, Not All Cattle Are Equal

Date: November 24, 2007
Source: NY Times
Author: Michelle Higgins

FLYING in coach doesn’t have to be a horrific experience. Really. You just have to pay more.

Increasing numbers of airlines have begun to offer slightly better seating in the back of the plane for passengers willing to pay the extra $15 or $100 to sit there. You may not get a seat that’s as plush or as spacious as one in business or first class, of course, but it will still be a step up from the cattle-car experience of standard coach.

“In the past, airlines looked at coach as just one thing,” said Chris McGinnis, editor of the Expedia Travel Trendwatch. “A coach seat is a coach seat is a coach seat. But in recent years, they’ve come to the conclusion that some coach seats are better than others.”

Thus, Virgin America, which started flying in August, charges $15 for a bulkhead seat on short-haul flights, like San Francisco to Las Vegas, and $25 for longer flights, like New York to Los Angeles; Northwest charges you $15 to reserve some of its better seats on domestic flights, like those in the exit rows; Air Tran sells exit row seats for an extra $20 each way; no-frills Spirit Airlines has what it calls Big Front Seats that cost upward of $30 extra per one-way flight and give you as much as six extra inches of room over a standard seat; and the once strictly egalitarian Southwest Airlines now allows those who have higher-priced tickets (mostly business travelers who book at the last minute) advance boarding and the option to choose the best seats.

An even better option is to book one of the so-called premium economy seats, a feature inaugurated by Virgin Atlantic in 1992 and now being offered in some form by a number of airlines, including United Airlines.

Called Economy Plus by United, the program features at least 36 seats on each flight that offer up to five extra inches of seat pitch (the distance between your seat and the one in front of you) over the standard coach seat. There’s a catch, though: If you’re not a high-ranking frequent flier, you have to pay a membership fee of $349 a year to qualify for one of these seats, and then it is available only on a first-come-first-served basis. (The airline says that on some flights, if premium seats are available, regular passengers may be offered the chance to upgrade, either online or at airport kiosks when they check in, for $25 or $30 one way.) United also offers a “p.s.” service on its nonstop flights between Kennedy Airport and the Los Angeles International and San Francisco airports, in which all 72 seats in a reconfigured coach cabin offer 34 inches of pitch and 17 inches of seat width, at economy-class prices that are competitive with other airlines’.

Premium economy is more commonly found on foreign carriers, and is often an excellent option for those dreaded long-haul flights across the ocean.

For instance, starting next month, all six of Virgin’s flights between London’s Heathrow Airport and New York will feature 62 new premium economy seats with 38 inches of legroom (compared with 31 in coach), lumbar support in seat backs that inflate and deflate at the touch of a button, meal service on china with stainless steel cutlery, fresh fruit any time during the flight and a predeparture glass of Champagne. The lowest round-trip economy fare for a flight in early December from Newark to Heathrow was $588 in a recent search at virgin-atlantic. A premium economy class seat cost $1,428; business class or “Upper Class,” $8,371.

Among the other airlines that offer seating in a kind of middle ground between coach and business are Scandinavian Airlines, Air New Zealand, All Nippon, BMI and British Airways, with Qantas planning to do so beginning in April. Benefits include from five to seven extra inches of legroom as well as priority check-ins and better onboard amenities.

But even if you fly standard coach, picking the right airline to fly and — most important — doing some seat research before you book your ticket can go a long way toward making your flight a more comfortable one. One of the best Web tools for this is www.seatguru.com, on which you can find practically every plane flown by most major airlines, with a detailed map of the cabin showing which seats are best and which are to be avoided at all costs. Here, based on advice gleaned from that Web site, as well as Seatexpert.com and Skytrax, a research firm that ranks airline quality, are some recommendations of which airlines to fly on three popular routes:

New York to Paris: Take the Air France flight out of Newark, which uses an Airbus 330 on that route, with its 2-4-2 coach configuration. Not only are your chances of getting stuck in a middle seat reduced, but the 32 inches of seat pitch and 18 inches of seat width are also among the roomiest on offer. (And you get French cooking.) Avoid Continental’s one-aisle 757, which has three seats on each side on that same route, with its Scrooge-like offerings of 31 inches of seat pitch, 17.2 inches of width and the one-out-of-three chance of being stuck in a middle seat.

Miami to London: Five airlines sell tickets on this nonstop route on a regular basis: British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, American and Singapore and Continental (the last two on a code share with Virgin). Here is where the seatguru chart can come in handy. British Airways seems to offer slightly less room than the others (a pitch of 31 inches versus 32 by its competitors), yet the configuration of this 747-400 plane offers only up to 6 of what seatguru defines as “poor” seats in coach, compared with 16 or so for American and 11 for Virgin, on their Boeing 777 and Airbus A340-600, respectively. But if in-flight entertainment matters more to you, then Virgin might be your choice, with individual TV screens at each seat and video-on-demand rolling out across the fleet.

San Francisco to Hong Kong: Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and United all fly the same plane, a 747-400, on this route, with a 3-4-3 seating configuration in coach. (American also sells it as a code share with Cathay Pacific.) United was offering the lowest round-trip ticket over Christmas (in recent online searches, $2,077 versus $3,074 on Cathay and a whopping $5,327 on Singapore), perhaps because it offers just 31 inches of seat pitch and 17 inches of width to the others’ 32 and 17.2 inches. United’s international economy class is also given a lower three-star ranking by Skytrax, compared with four stars for both Singapore and Cathay Pacific, which tend to offer better food, entertainment and overall service. Your best bet might be to fly Cathay Pacific if you can snag the second-to-last window seat at the back of the plane, where the seating Web sites point out that the curvature of the fuselage leaves enough room for just two seats in those rows and a lot more elbow room for those window seat passengers. Cathay Pacific also just revamped its economy class cabin with new seats that are designed to allow passengers to recline without intruding on customers seated behind them and that have nine-inch TV monitors in the seat back.