Premium Economy is a product that sits between the classical business class with all the frills and economy class, where there might be a frill, but tight seat pitch.
Emirates has been rolling out its Premium Economy product – and thinks premium economy “works”, after a year of operation.
The airline introduced its premium economy in August 2022, with the airline flying over 160,000 customers, with them seeing strong demand for the coming months.w
Currently, Emirates serves 11 cities with its premium economy product (currently available on the A380 fleet), with 13 cities to be served by the end of the year, as more retrofitted aircraft with refreshed cabins roll into scheduled service.
The airline reports its Premium Economy Class hash had overwhelmingly positive feedback with demand exceeding expectations and bookings growing month on month, demonstrating its appeal to a broad range of traveller segments
Nearly half of the customers flying in Emirates Premium Economy are solo travellers venturing off for holidays, while couples and families constitute the other half. More than 60% of customers who booked to fly in Premium Economy in the last year were also loyal Emirates Skywards members and regular customers of the airline.
Current operations
Emirates currently flies its A380s with the latest Premium Economy cabins to London Heathrow, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch, Singapore, Los Angeles, New York JFK, Houston, San Francisco and Dubai, with flights regularly registering full seat loads in Premium Economy.
The airline plans to make Premium Economy available to customers flying to/from Mumbai and Bengaluru from the 29th of October, and additional cities will be announced soon.
Emirates currently operates 20 aircraft fitted with Premium Economy, 14 of which were retrofitted in-house by the Emirates Engineering team in Dubai over the course of the last nine months.
The seat itself is based on the Recaro PL3530, which has been customised for the airline.
Addressing the middle segment
There is a place (as a lot of airlines have found) for extra space and extra service concepts in the sky – but there is a limit to how passengers will pay – especially the leisure traveller which has driven the recovery since the pandemic.
Premium Economy addresses this “middle” in a way that allows space to be used efficiently in the cabin, whilst being able to offer an inflight service that can be patched together from the service offering (eg, a premium dinner from a business class setting, whilst a light snack from economy class for arrival).
With Emirates, there is no doubt lot more customisation to the product to ensure it meets their high standards, to attract and maintain its customer base.
But its segment that exists, and is there to be filled. Unlike some fellow carriers in the region.
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That’s a really good looking PE seat, pretty much domestic F here in the States.
I’d definitely consider going with that on a long-haul flight!