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Delta recently announced they are adding Premium Economy seats (called Premium Select now) to many international flights starting next year. Their partner, Virgin Atlantic already has them on many routes and they are a very nice seat and class of service unlike Delta Comfort+ that is the same seat as the rest of coach with a tiny bit more leg room.
According to the Delta news page on Delta.com you can start booking them as of yesterday and for flights departing after the 1st of December.
Looking at availability from Atlanta to London we see the price for this will be 55,000 SkyMiles each way.
This also tells us what the LEVEL 1 Delta award pricing will be for the new product from Delta when it rolls out later this year. Clearly, with partners, only LEVEL 1 space can be booked but with the Delta product (when it is in service) expect Level 1-5 pricing.
I am not thrilled with this price considering it is nearly TWICE the price of coach. To me it is too high and for the difference, since I always book Level 1 or sale awards, I would much rather spend 15k more to fly a Delta One or Virgin Upper Class seat. I would have liked to have seen this at 45 or 50k per seat.
You tell me. Is 110,000 SkyMiles a good value for this seat round trip on Virgin? – René
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It’s only 2.5k less each way than business class to Europe on American or United.
@Ben – And you make my point even more. Thanks!
Thanks for the post Rene. Personally, I’d either just go in Economy for less SkyMiles or holdoff and book a longer trip to Asia in Biz on Korean using a bit more miles.
Not exactly a “deal”. Would rather transfer MRs to Aeroplan and book in real business class. Shame on Delta.
I’d much rather spend the 70k for business than 55k for PE. Using the outbound you list above & returning 1 week later the Virgin cash fare for Premium Economy is $1,400. I’d rather pay the cash rate than use 110,000 skypesos.
The only time i could imagine using this is maybe doing a Business award to Europe and a Premium Econ award on the return day flight to save some mile….but a spread of only 15k from PE to J is a no brainer…so i’d probably actually never do it 🙂
Absurd pricing in relation to their competitors. I also recently flew PE on VS and it’s certainly not worth 55k skypesos
LOL no. I peeked behind the curtain Sunday on LHR>MIA and it’s not worth it considering my seat up front WAS just 62,500 each way.
Guess I need new sweet spot to London.
I flew premium economy on Virgin two weeks ago; Los Angeles-London, London-Detroit.
The outbound was on a gorgeous 787 with excellent staff. Best of all was the menu dining and high-quality booze in the Virgin lounge before the flight. I compared it to flying domestic-style first-class on a flight to Hawaii. You can sleep decent if you had enough to drink and bring aboard your own pillow and blanket.
The return was on an older A330. Unfortunately, the return in premium economy is significantly less, umm, premium. In fact, the catering out of Los Angeles was, to my surprise, better than London. My food was completely cold, if not almost semi-frozen. Service was much less attendant — it was very difficult getting drink refills on alcohol. Also, the A330 doesn’t have wireless internet.
Still, both experiences were better than economy. Especially on a paid airfare of $1,200. What was most frustrating, however, is the difficulty in booking seats and so forth when flying Virgin on a Delta ticket.