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Premium Select is Delta’s name for their new premium economy cabin which is available only on certain international routes (at the time of this writing, it is available only on Delta’s Airbus A350s). It’s easy to get this mixed up with their Comfort+ seating, but it is quite different. Comfort+ is basically the same as regular economy but with slightly more legroom and slightly more recline. Premium Select has wider seats, more legroom, footrests, and premium food and drink service.
I recently had the opportunity to try out Premium Select… for about half an hour. Some readers will remember that I had purchased Premium Select seats for less than coach by using a little-known benefit of the Amex Platinum card. You can read all about that, here: International Premium Economy for less than coach.
After buying the tickets, I had called Delta to try to apply two Global Upgrade certificates (which are a benefit of Delta Diamond status… which I got through Delta credit card spend). As expected, the upgrades were wait-listed (business class upgrades on Delta flights between the US and Asia are rare). Anyway, the upgrades never cleared, not even at the gate, and so my wife and I boarded and headed towards our Premium Select seats. On the way, a flight attendant stopped us to let us know that our upgrades might clear after all due to a missed connection. She told us to have a seat and she’d get back to us in about 20 minutes. I think it was actually 30 minutes or more, but she did return, and she did move us up to Delta One Suites (Score!).
In our 30 minutes of Premium Selectitude, I formed the following opinions:
- Seat width: Good. In photos it looks tight, but it was actually very comfortable
- Seat padding: Good. This is important to me because on long flights my butt often starts to hurt – sometimes quite a lot. While 30 minutes isn’t enough to know for sure, my butt got the impression that things were good. In fact, I think that this may be one area where Premium Select is better than Delta One Suites. I found that the Delta One Suites seats were uncomfortably hard.
- Leg-rest: Excellent. To me this made a huge difference in overall comfort.
- Seat recline: Good. I only tried this for a minute, but that was enough to find that the recline was noticeably better than coach or Comfort+. On the other hand, the recline is less than what you may have experienced in old-style non-lie-flat business class seating.
- Leg-room: Good. I have short legs, so the leg-room seemed pretty good to me. A longer-legged person may disagree.
- Storage for stuff: Fair. There is a little hook to hang things. And there is a little slot on the seat in-front to put small stuff. And you can shove a few thin things into the seatback pocket. But that’s it. On the other hand, I was able to stow everything within easy reach (see photo below), so it’s not terrible.
- Video screen: Great! It’s big and bright. They hadn’t yet enabled it for in-flight entertainment so I can’t say anything about it’s responsiveness, etc., but I expect it’s good all-around.
Overall, I’d say that Premium Select is a big improvement over regular economy, but the experience is still closer to economy than to a good business class seat.
Photos follow…
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greg. this is a half ass review. go finish it. jk.
hope u plan on making a full trip report with maybe even a guide for Tokyo travel such as how to get around, staying connected, any other issues encountered and etc. would be cool to get a lot of tips from you.
I hope to get around to that soon. Thanks for the suggestion.
I am booked in Premium Select to/from Iceland this summer. (I wonder if it will be worth the extra miles I spent over coach.) It is the only premium cabin to/from Iceland on Delta to/from JFK or Minneapolis. It’s the only 2-side seating on the entire 757-200 (the rest is 3×3). I wonder if it would have been better for Delta to put domestic first-class seating in that space in terms of passenger comfort. Perhaps Delta can get in an extra row by using Premium Select seating?
Chaz, you will be seated in what is normally domestic first class – Delta renamed the premium cabin on the non-DeltaOne 757s as Premium Select instead of Business Class.
@Chaz I took the JFK:KEF flight a year ago when Delta was still calling it DeltaOne. As Obichang correctly stated, it is in fact a domestic First Class seat with what is supposed to be DeltaOne food and amenities. On our flight they forgot to provision us with headphones and boarding beverages. I complained and received a 50,000 mile refund on my points redemption which priced it more like Premium Economy on a Western Europe redemption which seemed more reasonable. The biggest challenge of the flight is how short it is given you get DeltaOne food service. It made for at best 3 hours of sleep. My suggestion is to eat in the lounge and skip dinner as the galley set-up and single-aisle in the 757 makes service especially slow.
Thanks to you both. I see now that Delta website states that Premium Select on 757-200 planes does not have a footrest nor the largest TV screen like Premium Select on the A350 has. I suspect I will find First Class seats, albeit the newer style as on newer domestic configurations. I wish I had captured what I saw when I booked this flight — can’t recall, but I sure feel like this was a bait-and-switch.
Along with the overseas Premium Select, I do get domestic first class on my shorter domestic connecting flights.