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Economy Class Purgatory
Cheap Charlie · November 18, 2002

It is always good for me to see how the other half lives.

I don't always ride up in first class or business class, but with elite status I have been lucky with upgrades. And, for short domestic flights, it really doesn't make much difference, especially when you can score bulkhead or exit row seats. When flying to Europe, in the past, I have been lucky to have been up in business class for most of my recent flights.

Not this time. This time, I flew as a common tourist on a deep-discount Internet-purchased ticket. I didn't even try to get an upgrade.

After my experience, let me start with a blatant plug for American Airlines and their "More Room in Coach" program. I have flown on American in coach frequently over the past year, just because there is "more room." During my latest international flights, on other airlines, those three extra inches of pitch or legroom never looked so good.

My first flight was on Continental from Boston to Newark. All went normally. Heck, the flight is short, you can stand anything, even when the person in front of me reclined his seat into my chin. I simply pushed my knees into his back and reclined my seat back into the next person's chin. Fortunately, she was only five feet tall. I still didn't have room to read a book at normal reading distance.

Then after boarding the Continental flight to Rome, I began time in Coach Purgatory. I am 6'3" and just fit into my seat with no millimeters to spare. Shifting to the right or left didn't help. The crew's main focus was doing the service as fast as possible and the meals lived down to airline food expectation. Continental is back to charging for wine and beer on international routes. My girlfriend (only 5'4") moaned that this was torture. Thankfully, Rome's airport finally freed us.

Rome to London on Alitalia was fine. I managed to score exit row seats and the flight was most pleasant. I did test several of the other coach seats and found the pitch on this particular aircraft to be about an inch or two better than on Continental.

The final flight was on Virgin Atlantic from London to Boston in economy class. The pitch was set more or less exactly as was Continental's coach. I gamely settled in for a long, grim flight.

But, wait, Virgin has discovered a secret--treat passengers well and entertain them and they forget that they are traveling like canned sardines. Virgin squeezes you in, but the service is good, everyone receives an amenity kit, three choices for meals are offered, drinks are free, and the entertainment is as good as it gets in the air these days.

I was fascinated by the entertainment system so I asked Virgin Atlantic for the specifics. They informed me that this was the "most advanced in-flight entertainment system in the world. It provides passengers with up to 300 hours of video on demand, 14 audio on demand channels, 15 computer games including multi-player games, and a quick find search facility. Virgin Atlantic also offers passengers the largest screen in business class at 10.4 inches and the largest screen in economy at 9 inches."

But that doesn't even begin to describe the system. Each movie can be fast-forwarded, paused and rewound by each individual passenger. Kids sitting next to each other can blast away competing within the same video game. I heard that text messages can be sent somehow through the system to other passengers. And there's more.

Squeezing out of my seat to get circulation back in my legs, I noticed that the bulkhead seats, between Premium Economy and Economy, were empty. These were seats with enough room for me to fully stretch my legs. I asked the flight attendant whether those seats were, perchance, reserved for the crew.

The surprising answer, "No, those aren't reserved for the crew. No one is sitting there because the in-flight entertainment system isn't working in that row."

I was astounded and happily claimed one of the three empty seats. The rest of my flight was wonderful. I could enjoy my meal, travel and read in comfort. But my girlfriend wouldn't budge. She was in movie-lover's heaven watching as many shows as she could before landing in Boston.

I'm certain that if my video-game-playing nephew were onboard the flight, I might never have gotten him off the plane. Kids will think they've reached Nirvana (or whatever they call it these days).

I learned that almost an entire planeload of economy passengers would sacrifice legroom for entertainment coupled with great service. Virgin Atlantic evidently learned that lesson long ago.

I wish some other airlines would take heed.

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at leocha@aol.com or access his Web site.