Emirates promises ‘very affordable’ fares for new premium economy seats

A new premium airline product is heading down under from August with Emirates promising ‘very affordable’ fares for passengers seeking to trade up.

A new premium airline product is heading down under from August with Emirates promising ‘very affordable’ fares for passengers seeking to trade up. Picture: Supplied

Emirates is the latest airline to offer Australian travellers the option of “premium economy” in recognition of the growing willingness among passengers to shell out more for extra space post-Covid.

From August 1, Emirates’ daily A380 flights into Sydney will come with 56 premium economy seats at the front of the main deck, in a 2-4-2 format.

The cabin has two less seats in a row than economy class, allowing passengers a whole 101cm (40 inches) of leg room, 20cm more than those in cattle class.

For that privilege, travellers can expect to pay about 15 per cent more than the top economy fare, which will make the Emirates product significantly more affordable than Qantas.

On the flying kangaroo’s long haul flights, premium economy can cost two to three times more than economy fares.

The Emirates’ fares will not be made public until they go on sale on June 1, with the airline’s Australasian vice president Barry Brown expecting a fast take-up of the deep recline leather seats.

Mr Brown said since travel restrictions eased, the demand for premium cabins was unlike anything he had seen in 45 years of working with airlines.

“You’re lucky to find a seat in first and business class for the entire month of May out of all cities from Australia, it’s just phenomenal and a lot of that is leisure because corporate hasn’t quite rebounded yet,” he said.

“There’s a lot of leisure travellers buying premium products at the moment, saying ‘here we are, let’s go and let’s do it in style’ after being locked down for two years.”

The premium economy seats were targeted at economy passengers seeking to trade up rather than business class travellers looking to save money, Mr Brown said.

With availability limited to six Emirates’ A380s, the 56 seats on each flight were likely to be booked out well in advance on Sydney-Dubai-London and Paris routes.

“There are another 67 (A380s) being retrofitted from November and another 57 Boeing 777s which will also be retrofitted from November onwards,” said Mr Brown.

“We’ll be expanding (the premium economy product) throughout our network but at the moment we’ve got the three key areas which will receive the flights.”

The near 14-hour duration of flights from Dubai to Sydney helped qualify the services for the new cabin offering which was planned before the pandemic.

Mr Brown said the Covid crisis provided the opportunity to make the plans a reality, and now that the world was coming out of hibernation, the “time was right” to launch it.

“People want to travel in style. I’ve had more calls in the last couple of weeks, saying ‘I can’t get a seat’ (in a premium cabin),” he said.

“They say ‘I’m a platinum member and you have to help me’. I say ‘I’ve got a high class problem”. I can put you on a wait list and that’s unique.”

The biggest challenge facing Emirates, like so many other companies worldwide, was staff shortages, limiting their capacity to rebound to pre-Covid levels of flying.

Although recruitment and training was well underway, Mr Brown said it would take time to return to the sort of triple-daily services they were doing into Australia in 2019.

Global managing director of Corporate Traveller, Tom Walley, said the limited airline capacity out of Australia had pushed up prices particularly in premium cabins but that was proving no deterrent.

Mr Walley said corporate clients were now clamouring to head overseas with 36 per cent going up the front of the jet, as opposed to 32 per cent pre-Covid.

“There’s a pent up demand for people to get back and see their customers and when they’re travelling long haul, they’re jumping up the front,” he said.

“Hopefully as capacity returns fares will smooth out a bit but as far as many corporates are concerned after two years without travel, those face-to-face meetings take priority over cost.”