Mini-Review: American Airlines Premium Economy A330-200 Philadelphia To Munich

Really nice review and like your writing style! Good job!

Informative and helpful review. Thanks.

Great addition. Thanks for the review. I’m based out of PHL and have always found lack of premium economy reviews a bit annoying. Thanks for fixing that!!! More reviews like this welcome!

A very nice review! Would also be interested to know more about premium econ compared with other airlines.

Great review, definitely good for people who travel for work. Looks like AA needs to upgrade their PE delivery though. They can't give real silverware?

I’m glad you like your job (and certainly Oktoberfest in Munich as part of the job sounds fun) but wow is that a stingy policy.

I can’t imagine a company that doesn’t allow business class on international flights, much less not even on flights over 10 hours! How are you expected to work after landing? Even domestically I can’t get much work done in economy. We typically book first class for flights over 3 hours.

GAO birds!!!

Good review. Thank you.

Wawa is the best source of food prior to getting on board American.

Great review. It does seem that the premium for PE slowly rises as the product becomes more established - at least that's what has happened (with some notable exceptions) with BA and VS.

Glad to see your contribution here as well, not just on the Ask Lucky forum! Congrats.

I upgraded to premium economy on a philly route before but i dont believe it was as cheap as $120. might have been more like $300 but i cant be sure. how far in advance did you make the decision to upgrade to premium economy?

Thanks for the review on AA Prem Eco. I've never tried it before, but I have on Delta's Premium Select cabin and at least to me it does seem from meal point of view, Delta's service seems slightly better compared to AA's from presentation and food content point of view. I guess this is personal. DL gives Tumi bag out vs AA's Cole Haan. At least on DL's A350 plane, it is clear that Premium Select has it's own lavatory and I've not really noticed Economy passengers coming up to use it despite the non existence of a curtain between the cabins.

Only items which looks better compared to DL is the pillow size, the one from Delta seems slightly smaller but it is well padded. It does seem nice that AA gives complimentary upgrade to Exec Plat into the cabin, which Delta does not even for their Diamond status holder.

Cheers!

Good review!

AA Premium Economy seems to be very reasonably priced. In my opinion, it’s almost a no-brainer, especially on flights to Asia.

Why do you find the upgrade ranking interesting?

AA's upgrade priority is very clearly published on the website. Prioritizing by status and total EQD, rather than fare class, makes total sense - it recognizes overall long-term spend to the airline rather than just "what did you do for me today". And think very carefully about the implications of Premium Economy being treated above Economy for SWUs - as that would likely mean that SWUs become only valid for Y-->W, and W-->J, and not valid for Y-->J.

As for complaining about little storage space. As you said - it's basically a domestic F seat. What were you expecting?

Thank you! I fly on Premium Economy most of the time and I always enjoy seeing reviews about these seats. Keep them coming!

Many thanks! I will be traveling PHL-MUC soon and yours is the first review of the A330-200 version of AA-PE I've seen.

I'm curious. You say:

"As a Platinum, paid Premium Economy passenger, would my upgrade clear before an Executive Platinum, paid coach passenger?"

But were you? You *upgraded* for $120, thus someone with lower status who paid for a Y fare (assuming your company purchased an lower priced coach fare) would be listed higher than you (since, again, I assume that if you bought a PE class fare from the get-go, you'd be in a different fare class).

@Bob, It's just a matter of when before the SWUs will become valid for Y-PEY, PEY-JCL, PEY-FCL. In other words, a one class upgrade. At the moment, I don't think PEY is a redeemable class. This is another excuse from management to redo the redemption charts.

Sorry…not PEY-FCL….JCL-FCL.

We flew in this seat on a 777-300 this Summer before it was officially Premium Economy. We got the seat but without the enhanced meal or the amenity kit. Overall, it was great and I would absolutely pay a $120 premium for it. The seat is the SAME seat as the domestic first class seat but with the addition of the foot rest in the non-bulkhead seats and the leg rest in the bulkhead seats. Storage is an issue. The foot rest essentially blocks access to the under-seat storage. Because of this, overhead storage is really at a premium. The bulkhead leg rest is way better than the foot rest and I would in the future try to get a bulkhead, especially as there really isn't any access to under-seat storage in nonbulkhead rows anyway.

TL;DR: This is business class from 30 years ago

Nice review!! I haven't flown American in many years due to the fact they don't serve the routes that I frequent, but it is nice to see them add the premium economy on long-haul routes. I think more airlines should add this class of service, with a real differentiation between premium and regular economy. It adds a ton of value without a huge premium. I do the same on Aeroflot. Usually, I intentionally book flights between Vladivostok and Moscow and between Moscow and U.S. destinations on flights operated by their 777-300's due to the fact they have a Comfort Class (premium economy) cabin. The seats are light-years ahead of regular economy seats, the business-class menu is served (using real silverware and plates) and the price difference between Comfort and Economy is generally very small. For example, I am flying VVO-JFK return in December, and 3 of the 4 flights are operated by the 777's. The difference between Economy and Comfort is just $250, so that is a no-brainer for me. (It is significant to note that after flying two VVO-JFK round trips in Comfort Class earns Gold Status, with less than $2500 spend, as Aeroflot does status based solely on miles or segments flown. It's absurdly easy to become Skyteam Elite Plus through them.)

Thanks for the review.

Really highlights a huge gripe that I have with North American carriers - the number of complimentary upgrades. I mostly pay cash for my flights in J, and can't stand when the cabin gets full with people who just get complimentary upgrades. It's not a good experience when the cabin is packed. Which is why North America carriers will never get my loyalty.

Thanks for the review. I've been flying PE quite a bit this year on OneWorld carriers and have found AA's product to be the best on average of those I've tried - mainly because of the seat. BA, with its business class entrées, has the best food, but is otherwise hit-or-miss (quite nice on the A380 but, not surprisingly, pretty awful on the dilapidated 747). And Cathay's PE product is just plain bad, with terrible food and a lousy seat.

Great review, and thanks a ton for diving into the upgrade process. These are the important pieces of information that you rarely get in a review, much appreciated!

I guess the goal is to get a PY bulkhead seat with the leg rest. The foot rest in the following rows seems rather useless.

I’m a Christmas leisure travel person to Europe and it’s been relatively easy to use my SWUs for Business Class seats in recent years. I have noticed that, on many of these flights, mainly CDG and FCO, the abundance of empty seats in Economy with many passengers having four center section seats to themselves on the A330 aircraft flying out of PHL. So if the past is any indicator of Christmas flight capacity, it seems everyone wins in all cabins.

Good job with your first review Ricky! Always enjoy your advice on Ask Lucky.

Thanks for the review! Great style, succinct and informative.

That pastry is hilarious though! It's so tiny. Even Lucky might eat that one. 😉 lol

@Andy

I booked this back in March. I was watching the flight pretty regularly hoping the upgrade to biz would clear, and it was definitely closer to $350ish as departure got closer.

@Bob wasn't expecting a ton of space, but somewhere to put the free bottle of water they gave me while my dinner was on the tray table would have been nice 🙂

@Seattle Eric

I was in a PE fare class from the get-go. As you can see from the earnings, I was booked in P class. Company was paying for Y, and I got the quote from American for $120 more to get into PE. I put the $120 difference on my personal card.

Sorry, goal was to keep the review short and sweet, so I did gloss over that a bit. Hope that clarifies!

Nice review! How was the recline? Other airlines publish it. Like Cathay’s A350 states 9” recline, which I was easily able to sleep with. RE: upgrades, I doubt they sold out the J cabin, most likely, CK and EXP passengers with high spend cleared days before, but the airport upgrade list didn’t clear anyone.
@EthFlyer, it’s great you pay for J always, this means you literally have no use for loyalty to any airline, but those of flying 150K plus miles a year, are spending a significant lot more than you are on a handful of J flights with whoever you chose, so those cabins fill in with the customers that actually support the particular airline financially. I would quickly hop away from loyalty were it not for the complimentary upgrades.

Did AA charge you a change ticket fee to upgrade to PE or just the fare difference? Just curious as my employer only allows coach and I would like to upgrade at my own expense sometimes.

Maybe his company paid a not so cheap price on economy, and they had a discounted premium economy fare available to charge only $120 to upgrade.

As a shareholder in my company, I choose to be frugal with company funds as it directly impacts me. I travel to Europe once per month and nearly always connect in Heathrow. I've found the premium economy is perfectly acceptable, even at 6'4" and with wide shoulders. When I have to fly from my home (LAX) instead of from the East Coast, it gets a bit tiring, but I have found that booking a connection in PHL or JFK makes it more palatable.

Ricky:
Excellent review. I know others have been asking for premium economy reviews, nice to see one.

Being 6’3” tall, I would not be happy with my employer if they didn’t provide a little more love when it came to air travel. Having said that, the upgrade cost was really reasonable in your case. An absolute no brainer.

@ricky - Thanks for the clarification!

I see the upgrade cost.. how much were the tickets before that?

@Jetset: Most companies don't book business for long haul flights because the cost/benefit doesn't make sense. Take a random example I just priced out, LAXLHR about 3 weeks out. I can find nonstop economy fare options between $700 and $1200 nonstop. The cheapest business class options are >$6000, and the nonstop ones are $10,000. Unless you're paid extremely well, the company would save money by booking you on economy, giving you a day vacation with hotel on each end, and having you do no work on those days.

Do you mean they roll up plastic cutlery in the rolled linen napkin???

@Rob - You praised AA for it's great PE seat and criticised CX for its lousy PE seat. The CX PE seats (at least in the A350) are exactly the same as the AA seats pictured above except they are covered in cloth.

@Nick - We typically don’t have buffer on international trips to pad with a day of no work (I’m in consulting) so the extra time isn’t an option. I do agree the prices are absurd (my last two international flights were $8,500 and $10,700 respectively) but I still can’t fathom a 10+ hour flight in economy for work.

Certainly for personal travel I can make those trade off decisions but for big corporations I don’t think it’s as excusable. I do understand how tightly finances need to be managed for small companies though so for those who are directly impacted (e.g. part owners or shareholders etc) I can see how it makes sense.

Very enjoyable reading your review. That last cut/paste of the actual statement from AA is from the AA website after your trip? Correct?
I wish AA would be a bit more transparent on EQDs / EQMs before the trip. (I know they give you a snapshot when you book ticket but then it seems to vanish when you get your actual reservation.) My new habit is to change name of reservation to the EQDs..... in this case, for you it would have been "12746". Otherwise, its very difficult ahead of time to know what those EQDs are.

Since when does AA offer unlimited, complimentary upgrades on transatlantic (or transpacific) flights? Am I missing something? I guess there could op-ups, but I have yet to experience that on AA (and only once on US before the 'merger').

Scoring a SWU upgrade on a 330-200 out of PHL is hard. I have only missed once once on PHL-LHR or the return over the last 3 years, but am only at 50% on 330-200s (to/from MAN, MAD, or BCN).

@Charles

Just the fare difference!

@Jason Lynn

Ticket was around $1400 - definitely a bit steep but with AA's only nonstop option to Munich during Oktoberfest, it was worth not having a connection

@Rob in Miami

That's a great idea for the EQDs! Might be stealing that one

And yep, that's straight from my account page after the flight

@CMTinPHL

Sorry for confusion. The complementary upgrades are economy to premium economy. Not all the way to business. That still requires a SWU

I’ll never understand the whole misunderstanding in the reasons behind upgrade priority. Person X spends $30k per year on travel with that airline, but on this one trip person Y spends $120 more for PE and thinks they should get priority over person X. Of course EQD and Status matters more than single fare $$. The fact there was a time this wasn’t the case is simply corporate idiocy.

@Ricky - gotcha... I was trying to think why I didn't know that, and then realized the last time I flew a -200 PE had yet to be installed. Heading to Dublin in a few weeks, and bought PE on the way over, though hoping a SWU clears (only one J seat left, so doubtful). Do you know if this is the same PE seat as Bon A's 787s? FWIW, I thought BA's PE seat pretty good, but soft product was barely better than economy. Maybe we just had a poor cabin crew.

That should be "as on BA's 787s"...

Thanks for the review. I like the premium economy product. I tried it for a $300 upgrade on a NRT to LAX flight recently. I would pay this again!

most companies I worked for only paid for coach no matter how long the flight unless you were the CEO or his minions. If you were smart you flew out a day earlier than you needed to and recharge or paid for the upgrade out of pocket, (some do some don't) or weasel the upgrade because it was only a few dollars more because of the extra baggage allowance.

Wow! That's a lot of EQMs for a premium economy flight!

Nice review and thank God that my company's travel policy is much more generous (First domestic and international).

What does EQD and EQC mean?

@Ryan I 100% agree that the airline should prioritize those who spend more. That's logical business sense.

However, if both person X and person Y are equal elites trying to upgrade to 1 seat in business class, but person X is eligible for a complimentary upgrade to person Y's seat, then why not upgrade both? Person Y gets the business class seat and person X gets person Y's former premium economy seat.

An upgrade is an upgrade in my mind, so if AA can upgrade two customers instead of one, that's two happy customers. Right?

@CMTinPHL

We flew BA 787 on the return. I didn't pay as much attention since I had no plans of sending to Lucky! I thought the seat was pretty comfortable, especially for a daytime flight. Got a few hours of sleep

@Jan

EQD is a rolling tally of how much you've spent on fares with American each year, and one of the factors they use to calculate your elite status. Stands for Elite Qualifying Dollars.

Not sure EQC 🙂

EQM is similar, Elite Qualifying Miles

The one thing I will correct you on is the cutlery. The cutlery in PE is Metal full sized 3 piece silverware, not the 5 piece you'd get in Biz, and not the plastic that you'd find in Main Cabin.

@Ricky considering your initial paid fare was $1400 it makes sense that youre upgrade was only $120. You were booked in P class which is the lowest option for the cabin. Had it been W class then you’d probably be paying about $500-$800 or more for that upgrade. It’s similar if you found a deal of $700 in economy, the upgrade would be about that as well.

Can anyone tell me how much better the recline in PE is compared to Economy?

Still waiting for an answer. Booked 9 hour flight Dallas to Honolulu in PE. May 2019. AA. My wife is 4ft 9. Will she be able to reach the footrest? She will be miserable otherwise. At present, she is booked on bulkhead, with legrest and footrest, but I am behind her. Other bulkhead seats are booked.

There are window isle two abreast available in the back rows. That would be nice, but only if she can reach the footrest. Her most miserable flight was first class on a 4 hour flight, when her feet were hanging in the air.

I'm curious to know how you adjusted the aisle armrest? Ive searched this and read many articles where people didn't know how to do it. Whats the secret to lowering the aisle armrest in PE?

Is there a difference in legroom or recline between row 6 and row 8?

@Paul S I can't say for certain since I didn't sit anywhere besides the bulkhead. But, I think she'd be most comfortable in the bulkhead. I'm 5'9 and my knees were slightly in my body. With her being a foot shorter, I think she'd be quite comfortable.

@Kelly Powell there is no difference in recline. You'll have a bit more legroom naturally in row 6 because it is the bulkhead versus row 8. The real main difference is the legrest vs footrest

@Jennifer there is a button on the lower part of the seat, if I remember correctly. Sorry, it's been about 8 months now since the flight and I can't remember for sure! It was definitely one of those, 'aha' moments when I figured it out.

Just took AA Premium Economy to Hawaii. Bulkhead center. Lack of any storage makes it inconvenient. My wife is 4 ft 10 and needed the leg rest. She loved the bulkhead. I am 5 ft 7 and couldn’t touch the bulkhead wall with my feet. While I enjoyed the leg rest, the footrest at the bottom of the leg rest, is very awkward to use. Even at 5 ft 7, it was awkward for me.

Cold sandwiches for free on 8 hour Dallas to Honolulu flight. Of interest, no amenity kit. Just a blanket and pillow. Due to a mechanical problem, we never took off and returned to the gate. The substitute plane was apparently set up for international service. An amenity kit was included, as were over the ear headphones vs the cheaper in your ear buds. The eye mask included is actually very effective. Used it every night of my hotel stay.

Also worth mentioning, terrible bathroom setup with narrow aisles. Premium passengers started using the first class toilets directly in front of us. Maybe it was business class. Larger toilets. Changing station. No one stopped us.

Hi There! I'm using a wheelchair and I would like to know how to lower this armrest, because I need to do it to transfer myself into the seat. I know that flight attendant in the plane should know how to do it, but they not always know how to do it, so I'm searching the Internet to know how to, but it's no good luck for know to discover it. Please if you know how to do it, I really appreciate it.