Premium Economy

Those two words seem like a contradiction.  I did book my flights with premium economy tickets though, and I think I’m glad…?

It added quite a bit of money to the price, but with my travel stress I thought maybe that would soothe me back down.  At the very least I could be more comfortably stressed.

The seats and service were pretty nice.  Obviously the crappy little planes out of Medford don’t offer that, but my other two legs do (the 12-13 trip and the 3-4 hour trip).

On the first leg (777-300ER) I got there after my seat-neighbor.  Bunch of crap on my seat, some of it I assumed came with the seat.  Other stuff I pointed out to her later when it fell on the floor; only to have her tell me that was my stuff.  She was probably annoyed with me for half the trip wanting to know why I didn’t get my stuff out of her way.

Seat came with a blanket, a pillow, some little zip bag that I never bothered to look in, and a water bottle.  The problem is, what do you DO with all that stuff?  Under the seat in front of me I had my bag, so mostly I traveled with a bunch of crap in my lap.

The seats are pretty roomy.  I head to lean forward to operate the touch screen on the back of the seat in front of me.  A few time my seat-neighbor got up to go to the bathroom and didn’t even bother me to get by — enough room that they didn’t even bump me (although they did have to TRY to not bump me) — had my eyes closed, but wasn’t asleep, twice I was surprised to find somebody trying to get into the seat next to me only to realize it was the person I last saw there…

Tray tables come out of the middle between the bigger tween-seat armrests.  Room for both people to put their arms there if they want.

There was a whole video on how to work the seats.  They had leg rests, remote controls for the video and to control the lights, USB charging ports.  I think there was even an AC port but I didn’t go looking for it.

After the plane took off they came by with orange juice and sparkling wine.  Meals came in two courses.  Could just be that is all normal for this airline, never having flown coach with them before, but I have a feeling it isn’t.

You get to board early, and I never saw any contention with the overhead space since it was only the premium economy luggage in that part of the plane.

I didn’t eat or drink anything though.  Stress and my delicate stomach…  I really wanted to avoid any dire reactions.

So I guess I didn’t take full advantage of it, but i did get what I wanted out of it which was more breathing room while in the plane.  Both my seat-neighbors were agile and quiet which also helped.