Moritz Winkler began flying regularly for work about a decade ago. Nearly once a month he would make a 10-hour trek from Los Angeles to Germany – in coach.
It was about a year after he began flying frequently that Winkler, who works in tech and now lives south of San Jose, received a surprise upgrade to business class on a personal trip to India. It changed the way he wanted to fly.
“The difference in experience from something that you actively despise or dread to something you’re actually looking forward to – that just blew my mind,” Winkler said. “When we landed after that flight, I told myself, ‘I have to find a way to do this again.’”
An increasing number of travelers like Winkler are willing to pay up for more comfort at 35,000 feet, a shift that’s prompting sweeping changes at U.S. airlines as they race to upgrade their onboard offerings.
Legacy carriers who have offered first class and other luxury amenities for decades are doubling down on them and profiting off changing tastes. And discounters like Frontier, JetBlue and Southwest are rushing to add new spacious seats and other amenities in an effort to cash in.
“People don’t like to board last and not have luggage space. They don’t like to then pay for choosing seats. By packing all of these into a premium offering … you can convince even budget-conscious customers to pay,” Gad Allon, a professor at Wharton and director of the school’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, wrote in an email.
Or, as travel analyst Henry Harteveldt put it: “It boils down to three words: Flying coach sucks.”
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A first-class boom
When airlines talk about “premium” seats, they can mean several different things. On domestic flights, there is “first class” at the front of the plane. This typically means two seats on either side of the aisle instead of three, with more legroom and greater recline; priority boarding; free bags; and better food – hot meals on longer flights – and drink options.
Beginning in late 2025, the budget carrier Frontier will add a first class of its own, installing eight such seats on planes across its fleet. The new offering will build on the UpFront Plus premium seats the airline already debuted in April, which grant travelers extra legroom and a guaranteed empty middle seat.
“Within our existing customer base, there is a desire, and a willingness, to pay for more creature comforts, and we want to make sure we satisfy that demand,” Frontier chief executive Barry Biffle said in an interview. The decision came after the airline saw “huge success” with UpFront Plus, he said.
Frontier’s new first class will cost less than $400 one-way when it debuts next year, about 50 to 70 percent more than its economy seats, Biffle added.
JetBlue is another airline that plans to add first class to its planes, chief executive Joanna Geraghty told the Wall Street Journal this month. While she provided few additional details, the seats will be a separate offering from the lie-flat Mint seats that the airline already offers on certain planes that fly on longer flights across the country and to Europe.
And, even as the costs of first-class seats increase, fliers are eagerly filling them. The average first-class fare in the United States jumped 58 percent, to an average of $761, from 2021 through 2024, according to data from the aviation analytics firm Cirium Diio. That surge in prices far outpaced the growth of first-class seats themselves, which only increased by about a third.
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Upgraded seats for in-between prices
Not everyone, of course, wants or is willing to pay for first class. For all the airline executive talk of travelers wanting to buy up to premium seats, more than 9 of 10 fliers in the U.S. this year sat in coach, data from Cirium Diio shows.
Peter Sachs, a former air traffic controller and airspace expert who lives in Portland, Ore., travels frequently for both business and leisure and is eager to buy up to a premium seat when he can – and when prices allow.
“An extra $1,000 each way is justifiable for transatlantic flights, but more than that raises eyebrows,” Sachs said.
The challenge that airlines face is striking a balance between more premium options and prices that travelers are willing to pay.
That’s why many, including Frontier, Southwest and Spirit, are introducing new options in between coach and first class for more price-conscious fliers. These “premium economy” seats, while still uncommon on domestic flights, may offer more space, amenities and better food, and extra-legroom coach seats, like Frontier’s UpFront Plus.
In August, notoriously spartan Spirit Airlines launched a similar version of premium economy (called “Go Comfy”) with extra legroom, a guaranteed empty middle seat, free bags, priority boarding and complimentary food and drink onboard. A Washington Post search found that Spirit’s premium seats can cost from $40 to $120 more than its standard seats; some of Frontier’s, meanwhile, cost $125 to $150 more than its standard seats, including for short flights.
“Airlines, even budget airlines, have realized that by properly pricing their premium products they can encourage enough people to trade up and pay for it,” said Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group.
Southwest, long known for its egalitarian all-coach seating, plans to convert about a third of the seats on its planes to ones with extra legroom late next year when it also introduces assigned seating. Ryan Green, Southwest’s chief transformation officer, said at an event in September that the airline’s shift “is about giving customers more choices and control over their travel experience.”
Green said Southwest was working out what, if any, additional amenities it will offer with its new spacious seats and that the prices will be “very competitive to what’s out there in the marketplace.” Southwest currently charges between $25 and $50 one-way for priority boarding.
Winkler, for his part, has changed jobs since the days of his once-a-month flights to Europe. He regularly flies business class on longer work trips these days, and he aspires to do the same on his personal trips. But, with a family of five, premium seats quickly add up.
Far more often, they all fly coach.
“It purely is a function of it just being so expensive I can’t justify it anymore,” Winkler said. “But I am still very willing to pay a premium.”
The Washington Post · Edward Russell