Ah, the golden age of travel, said no one flying in economy. Don’t mind us: we’re too busy trying to fold up our limbs so we take up as few cubic inches as possible, reassert our extremities on armrests or find a space for the puny handbag that was all we were allowed to take for free.
Perhaps the boss of Emirates has a point. This week Sir Tim Clark said that economy class has long been ignored in favour of premium seats and is stuck in the 1990s. While there has been huge innovation in the expensive seats, including bumper premium economy cabins (Virgin Atlantic), snazzy double beds in first (Singapore Airlines), customisable lighting (Cathay Pacific’s new Aria Suite) and “ultra-first-class” (Lufthansa’s Allegris cabin), plain old economy has remained just that.
There has been some innovation. On the big blue-sky thinking end there’s Global Airlines, whose first transatlantic flight took off from Glasgow to New York last month. The entrepreneur James Asquith wanted to recover some of the magic of the “golden age of travel” with his new venture, which involves posh amenity kits and even champagne in economy, but after two odd one-off charter flights there’s no indication when it might fly again. At the bottom end there is talk of stand-up seats, or double-decker seats, which the planemaker Airbus is exploring with the Spanish firm Chaise Longue, to pack even more passengers in.
Swiss is one of the better economy options
Unfortunately economy class is a topic I’m extraordinarily well qualified to talk about. You might think travel editors turn left but I find myself in seat 54K far more often than I’d like to admit. Over the past 15 years of doing this job I’ve flown on hundreds of flights in what feels like a billion different seats, from short hops on Ireland’s Aer Lingus to long-haul travel on Air New Zealand. I have seen the state of decay across different brands in everything from “lite” fares that only involve hand baggage and no food, all while paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege.
Of course the state of economy varies hugely depending on the airline you’re flying with, the aircraft itself and how old it is. Seat 26F on a knackered old Boeing 747 is not the same as seat 26F on a top-of-the-range Airbus A350. I’ll take the cheap seats on an Airbus A380 — the world’s largest passenger aircraft — where window seats in economy come with handy storage bins.
But some airlines do a much better job than others.
The Middle Eastern “Gulfies”, for example, are actually pretty good, although naturally bombastic products such as Qatar Airways’ Qsuites — spacious cubicles for up to four sheikhs only, given the exorbitant cost — munch all the column inches.
I flew from Heathrow via Dubai to Sri Lanka and back in an Emirates middle seat a few months ago; if you forgive the sensible beige-and-red colour scheme, plus its old-fashioned swirly carpet-like seats, you’ll find hundreds of box-office films, yummy meals and some natty storage for your phone and glasses. (My only complaint is that due to Emirati taste each film had the language sanitised, so Bridget Jones’s memorable line about the Iraqi dictator came out as: “I’d rather have a job washing Saddam Hussein’s cars.” But then that’s not economy’s fault.) Same for Qatar Airways, with 13.3in TVs and amenity kits that now clog up my bathroom. It helps that its Doha hub, with its indoor waterfall and garden, is one of the most gorgeous airports there is.
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Air New Zealand and Qantas deserve a mention for their plush economy cabins — because the distances that they fly are so great, they have to be state-of-the-art. Qantas, which is planning nonstop London-to-Sydney flights, has a “wellbeing zone” for mid-flight yoga and stretching on its Airbus A350 aircraft; Air New Zealand has the SkyCouch, where passengers can lounge across three seats as if they’re in business.
Somewhere in the middle is our very own British Airways. Although it did away with its free short-haul meals years ago and now you’re lucky to get a bottle of water and a bag of ludicrously small pretzels, last year it announced an overhaul of its economy seats on short-haul aircraft, with snazzy quilted leather seats and various fast-charging USB plugs. On its transatlantic cousin in the Oneworld group of airlines, American Airlines, economy passengers do at least get a big can of Diet Coke to go with the free nuts.
On the topic of food, I’ve always had a soft spot for Air France, which serves free champagne in economy; Swiss, which gives passengers a little bar of milk chocolate; and Virgin Atlantic with its free pots of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. It’s the little things! Give me any of this over the Chinese airlines’ “vegetarian” options that actually mean chicken.
Virgin has free ice cream on board
PERRY GRAHAM
Space is the main gripe of those who fly regularly down the back. The average pitch — the space between the back of one seat and the one in front — in economy is about 29 inches. A Which? report from April this year found that Aer Lingus and Air Canada had the most generous seat pitch in economy for a long-haul airline (31 inches), although the American airline JetBlue beats the lot of them with its ultra-wide seats, among the industry’s best at 18 inches.
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You don’t need to cross the pond to find this, though. The Scottish regional airline Loganair has a 30in seat pitch, the most generous among the short-haul carriers; as well as space you’ll also get a lovely Harris Tweed tartan headrest cover, a proper brew and a Tunnock’s caramel wafer. But presumably not on its shortest flight, which lasts just 53 seconds, from Westray to Papa Westray in Scotland’s Orkney Islands.
In this very scientific analysis it feels mean to target budget airlines such as easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz. They all get you from A to B safely with no faff; you’ll have to bring your own martini glasses and caviar, as two TikTokkers did on an economy flight from New York to Miami.
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That said, Wizz has started to fly medium-haul flights from London to Saudi Arabia — sevenish hours — with no free food, just one small handbag and no opportunity to recline the seat. You might need more than a martini to deal with that.
If you are flying in economy, here’s how to behave
1. Don’t hog the armrests, especially if you have a window or an aisle seat. If you’re stuck in the middle seat, this is your real estate to annex. Elbow others out of the way as appropriate.
2. Respect the overhead bin space. If all you’ve got is an anorak and a tiny handbag, don’t throw them up there with the Samsonites, which passengers have no doubt paid through the nose for. Put them under your seat and move them up there only when everyone else has boarded.
3. Don’t put your feet on the seats. In 2025 this shouldn’t need saying but I’ve lost count of the number of passengers who disrobe and then put their icky feet everywhere — including poking through the gaps in the seats in front. Quite the mid-flight sharpener.
4. If you’re in a window or middle seat, control your liquid intake and don’t tap passengers on the shoulder constantly asking to get up. This is particularly important on a night flight.
What do you think airlines could do to improve their economy offering?