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- Business class offers more comfortable seats.Businessclass image by Angelika Bentin from Fotolia.com
Traditionally, airlines offer three classes of service: economy or coach class, business class and first class. Logistically, on flights with all three offerings, the business class section comes between first and economy class. On some flights, business or first class are available upgrades from economy. Though it varies by airline, aircraft and length of flight, business class offers greater comfort and more amenities than a seat in economy. - Complaints of being cramped in a coach seat are so common they have become legend in air travel conversations. A major advantage of business class is more legroom. Exactly how much varies from plane to plane, flight to flight and carrier to carrier. Business class seats offer more than additional legroom. Many recline allowing you to sleep more comfortably. Mark Frary, a writer for the UK-based Times Online, notes that Air Canada's business class seats extend to six-foot-three-inches long and 31 inches wide at shoulder level. Delta and other major airlines offer "flat bed" seats that can be aligned perfectly horizontal to the floor. In its "Next Generation Business Class," American Airlines offers two tray tables that, when combined, simulate a work-desk at your seat.
- Economy class, in most cases, requires you to share a television screen with a large section of your cabin. Of course, this assumes you are slated to receive any entertainment at all. Business class seating tends to offer more entertainment in a bigger package. For instance, Frary notes that United Airline's business class seats have 15-inch personal TV screens. United's website claims, as of March 2010, that "individual entertainment" in business class includes nine video channels with movies and short features and noise-reducing headphones. American Airlines offers similar perks in business class, including Bose headphones.
- In business class, you can expect more than peanuts. Like other business class advantages, variations exist between carriers. Delta Airlines, for example, boasts five-course meals with entrees from celebrity chef Michelle Bernstein. Offerings, as of March 2010, include lasagne pasta bites tossed with spinach and radicchio in a light gorgonzola sauce, topped with pine nuts, according to Delta's website. After your main course, you are treated to a selection of cheeses or an ice cream sundae. United also uses a world-renowned chef (Charlie Trotter) offering a choice of gourmet meals, local cuisine when possible, premium alcohol, Starbucks coffee and traditional Japanese fare on flights between the U.S. and Japan.
- If you belong to an airline's frequent flyer club, you will often receive more miles for flying business class. For example, Delta credits your account with 150 percent of the actual miles flown in a business-class seat. United offers priority check-in, boarding and deplaning. Delta and United both make sure that you are the first to receive your bags in the claim area post-flight. On the above-mentioned airlines and many others, you also enjoy access to exclusive airport lounges.
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