Economy class cabins on international flights are shrinking all the time. Business class is getting larger and premium economy has encroached on the space as well. Will airlines eventually ditch economy class altogether?
Of course, I am specifically referring to long-haul services, as there is no hope of it going on short-haul or domestic flights. So who might be first to take the plunge?
Economy Class In The Past
Before we come to that though, let’s go back to the past. When you look at old seating plans, you can see that the majority of the plane was taken up by economy class seating.
The Modern Era Shows Changing Consumer Demand
The 21st century has seen some changes. First, lie flat business class seats are now the standard across most airlines and second, the introduction of premium economy. Premium economy caters to a growing segment of the market, the retired boomers with cash to burn.
Who Might Be First To Ditch Economy Class?
Airlines with large long-haul networks who offer four classes of service would be the contenders here. Examples would be airlines like Lufthansa and British Airways, as you can see below.
Overall Thoughts
With a population that is growing richer as time passes, people are able to pay more for better seats when travelling. This translates to more money for the airlines and there is definite shrinkage of economy class cabins as a result.
Whether any airline will ditch economy class altogether will depend on economics. If they can fill an entire aircraft with first, business and premium economy, then there won’t be any need for the deeply discounted cheap seats.
That being said, it will take a brave CEO to drive such a change and make a success of it. However, I do feel it will occur and probably within my lifetime.
What do you think of all this? Poppycock or is there some merit to it? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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TWA Seat Map via Airlines Past & Present.
Air Canada Seat Map via Airlines Past & Present on Pinterest.
United Seat Map via Frequently Flying.
Qantas Seat Map via Pinterest.
Lufthansa and British Airways modern seat maps via the respective airlines.
Singapore Airlines seat map via AirlinesFleet.com.
I don’t fly economy long haul. For short haul, I really don’t mind and economics dictates.
I don’t care if the back is business or economy. I don’t value premium economy and used it only once on Eva some years ago.
I will reroute for business class deals such as when LHR-BKK is £2500 and ARN-BKK is £1150. I’m often paying for multiple tickets as well so it must have an economic angle.
From an airline’s perspective, I can see a contraction of economy seats to fuel the desire to upgrade at the time of purchase but that only works if economy passengers are not profitable. If they are, then hard to see why removing them would make sense.
Sure, I completely agree with you with regards to the business class deals like that. I did exactly that recently, flew to ARN to get a flight to SYD as the ticket was far cheaper than doing it in a more convenient manner. I’ll swap time for money with barely a thought. Appreciate your comments, so thank you for that!
The economy is reasonably good right now, so high-J configurations end up being financially viable. If we see another downturn bigger economy cabins will come back.
Also, let’s not forget some long-haul routes from ANA and JAL, who run “economy” with 33″ of pitch and 8 seats across on a 787. Not exactly premium economy but definitely lower density with some level of price premium.
One huge catch for dropping a class of service out of an aircraft for a network carrier is now you can’t use that aircraft for connecting itineraries in Economy. Which means that you’re at a scheduling disadvantage to cpetitors who still have Economy seats. This matters less for point-to-point routes (see La Compagnie and NYC-LON), or routes with higher frequencies (also NYC-LON) but things still get logistically questionable if your normal class of service doesn’t exist on a key international flight.
I don’t agree that another downturn will see bigger economy cabins, During the recession, airlines just discounted their J products and offered other carrots to frequent flyers to encourage bookings. The cost of reconfiguration is generally too prohibitive to make a change for what is usually a short-term thing.
I do agree with you though, ceding an entire cabin to the competition would probably be too much for most airlines to stomach, though technically it may be possible to use your joint venture partners in that way. For example, you don’t sell economy but you are selling economy on your partner, so you really are still capturing the market. I’d be interested to see how the economics stack up in that regard. Thanks for your comment!
The carriers that run the ultra long haul flights will probably dip their toes in first as much for operational reasons as financial. If it is successful here, Other routes that cater more to business and other premium travelers might be good candidates next. I don’t think routes that have a lot of mostly leisure travel would go this route.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head as to how it might pan out. It may well be a split where certain routes can be filled with business and premium travellers and not bother with economy at all, while traditional leisure routes will probably always have it. Thanks for the comment!
I’m going to go with “never”.
BA can’t even make LCY-JFK work really well (they’ve had to drop flights), and the NYLON market is the single top market for business class in the universe.
The reason SQ uses a PY/J config for SIN-LAX/EWR is because an A359 ULH is basically a better flying gas can than the A345 ULHs they used to use, but it’s still a flying gas can, and it’s still not going to make it fully loaded with Y pax and baggage. The obvious answer is to do a premium-heavy config as opposed to weight-restricting a ULH plane (LOL)… but I’d say the argument that you make that it’s working well in all markets for SQ is pretty slim, given that they just took the A359 ULR off SFO-SIN (3x switched to regular 359) and did service reductions on LAX-SIN (from 10x to 7x).
I did actually say, “solely so the aircraft has enough range – and economically makes sense” – I never said it was working well for SQ. My reference to “economically makes sense” was to mean that SQ obviously crunched the numbers when planning to introduce the aircraft and decided that the configuration of business and premium economy would make sense for the routes they wanted to do. How that has turned out is another matter entirely.
You are right on the JCY-JFK service, however at this point that is hampered by an on board product that is now completely dated. They did sell one Airbus A318 so it will never be twice daily in each direction again and its days may be numbered. You may well be correct with your vote of never, so we’ll see what happens over time. Thanks for the comment!
Privat Air of Switzerland died. They had no economy class. They flew for Lufthansa and Scandinavian, possibly others
Yes, I remember. They were also one of those business class only startups.
La Compagnie since many years?
I see where you’re coming from, but La Compagnie’s whole model is to be a boutique all business class airline. That is different from the changing configurations of the network carriers.
I know, its not an answer in the spirit of the original question. Also, their fleet is not large enough to make valid comparisons with anyone else.
True, and while they are still standing, the viability of their business model is still questionable. But time will tell what happens there!