The beauty of mid-range products

Once or twice, when on a crowded overnight flight, I have taken a sneaky stroll through the different cabins for the purpose of comparison. My reaction on first peering into each cabin goes like this. First class: ‘Gosh, this is fabulous. It’s like a restaurant in the air.’ Business class: ‘Ooh, this is nice; they get flat beds and everything.’ Premium economy: ‘Well this is OK; the seats seem comfy and it’s all pretty civilised.’ Economy: ‘It’s the “Raft of the Medusa”.’

Now here’s the thing. In terms of comfort, the biggest gap between two adjacent flight classes is between economy and premium economy. This improvement is simply achieved with seats a mere inch or so wider, with a tad of extra legroom and eight seats per row rather than nine – in a 2-4-2 seat configuration rather than the ghastly 3-3-3. Proportionately, it doesn’t cost much to do this – indeed premium economy is a very profitable cabin for airlines.