Thai Airways is taking an interesting approach to how it’s selling the premium cabins on some of its newly acquired planes. It might just make for the world’s best premium economy product, or something, as flagged by Live and Let’s Fly.
In this post:
Thai Airways now offers flat bed premium economy
On its Facebook page, Thai Airways is promoting how it’s introducing “Premium Economy Plus.” As the airline describes it, “upgrade your senses for smoother journeys,” and enjoy “spacious seats, generous legroom, and exclusive services throughout your journey.”
This new product will be available as of October 26, 2025, on select flights from Bangkok (BKK) to Chennai (MAA), Dhaka (DAC), Hyderabad (HYD), Jakarta (CGK), and Kathmandu (KTM).
Interestingly, it doesn’t appear that “Premium Economy Plus” is actually for sale on flights to any of the above destinations yet, and I don’t see any other press release about this. However, this was posted on the carrier’s real Facebook page a couple of days ago, so I imagine this will be loaded into the schedule shortly.
So, what is Thai Airways’ Premium Economy Plus?
I sort of understand what’s gong on here, but I can’t necessarily make sense of the logic. Thai Airways recently acquired three Airbus A330-300s that previously flew for Virgin Atlantic, and the airline maintained those interiors.
Those former Virgin Atlantic A330s are equipped with 264 seats, including 31 business class seats, 48 premium economy seats, and 185 economy class seats. The business class seats are indeed in a herringbone configuration, like you’ll find above.
What’s interesting is that historically Thai Airways hasn’t offered any sort of a premium economy product, so that was only introduced with these leased planes (the airline does now plan to roll it out on a widespread basis, following the industry trend).
So on flights on the above routes, I currently see the airline selling just premium economy, and not business class. But when you go through the process of booking a premium economy seat, you’ll see the actual premium economy cabin, with seats in a 2-3-2 configuration.
So, why does Thai Airways plan on selling its business class seats as a premium economy “plus” product of sorts? Broadly speaking, I suppose there are two possible explanations.
One is that the airline doesn’t think this product is up to business class standards. While I’m not a huge fan of this herringbone configuration, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, because this is a better hard product than on some of Thai Airways’ other planes.
I think the other possible explanation is that these are routes on which there just isn’t much business class demand, so the airline figures it’s better to save on soft product costs, and instead brand all the premium seats as premium economy instead. I suspect that’s what’s going on here, especially with markets like Dhaka getting this.
When I flew to Dhaka on Kuwait Airways several years back on a three-cabin A330, I was booked in business class. However, the airline seated business class passengers in first class, and used business class as “overflow seating” for economy class, given how little premium demand there was. So I suspect that’s going on here.
So I sort of get what the airline is going for, but I can’t imagine the airline will generate much incremental revenue by branding this as a premium version of premium economy. After all, markets with limited business class demand also typically have limited premium economy demand, let alone demand for a product that’s an upcharge above the standard premium economy. For that matter, having 79 premium seats sure is a lot of premium capacity in markets without much premium demand.
We’ll mark this as “developing” for now, but it sure is interesting…
Bottom line
Thai Airways is introducing Premium Economy Plus, which essentially seems to a rebranding of the carrier’s A330 business class on ex-Virgin Atlantic planes. The airline has both business class and premium economy on these planes, and is selling business class as a premium version of premium economy instead.
This is an interesting approach for the airline to take. I’m guessing this is in markets where the airline doesn’t think there would be much demand for business class, because otherwise it’s hard to make sense of this. At the same time, if there’s not much demand for business class, there’s also probably not much demand for a product that’s an upsell over premium economy.
What do you make of Thai Airways’ Premium Economy Plus?
Thai actually used to sell Business class seats on some Scandinavian routes as Premium Economy.
From my POV it's exactly like you guess:
I flew just this ex-Virgin plane from Chennai to BKK. Booked as C - still this config really doesn't feel like a proper Business Class anymore, and there is little premium demand on this route.
So this makes sense to me.