Jaunted

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Flying Garuda Indonesia's Executive Class Actually Has...Class

Since an important part of traveling includes how you get there, it's always nice to sit up front in an airplane. While it makes more sense to experience first or business class on long-haul flights, doing so requires a lot more digging into pockets than most people can manage. The most economical way to fly in the premium cabin is to use miles for an upgrade.

We recently flew an airline that isn't part of our favorite airline alliance (yet). This means no opportunity to use those frequent flyer miles to stretch our legs. While planning a Bali trip, we needed to fly to Denpasar/Bali from Jakarta, and found one of our options to be Garuda Indonesia. Knowing little about them beyond that they're the national airline, we were curious.

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It's Art: Gymnastics Routines Using Business Class Airplane Seats

No, this isn't a story on the Olympics, but we could see how you could think that.

Art comes in many forms and is often described as subjective. A current performance exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art is no exception. This time it has caught the attention of aviation enthusiasts by blending the architecturally fluid lines of business class seats with the sheer strength and flexibility of gymnastics.

The IMA is currently exhibiting Allora & Cazadilla. The visual artist duo of American born, Jennifer Allora, and Cuban born, Guillermo Calzadilla are part of the museum's Venice Biennale. While the pair have a number of commissions at the gallery, the most intriguing for our arena would be the Body In Flight Series.

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You'll Definitely Want to Watch TV on Qatar Airways' Boeing 787 Dreamliners

While most of us were working like normal last week, grabbing coffees and going home to watch sitcoms, thousands of travel industry C-suiters were having champagne cocktails in Berlin and toasting their latest product unveilings during ITB, the largest travel show in the world. One of the most exciting reveals comes from Qatar Airways, who lifted the veil on their economy and business seat designs for their Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The fresh new plane begins flying between Doha and London come later this summer, and the 22 business class passengers and 232 in economy will have the latest seatback, in-flight entertainment technology (lots) of money can buy. Yes, there will be power outlets and USB ports at every seat, but the real wow factor—at least for us—is with those huge TVs.

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Endlich! Get Psyched for Lufthansa's New, Lie-Flat Business Class Seats

Yes yes yes! Or, rather, ja ja ja! Lufthansa today made the huge announcement that they will be introducing an all-new Business Class, with redesigned seats and entertainment systems. Oh, and guess what? The new seats will be lie-flat, which solves the biggest complaint about the current seats, which recline to an angle (and you end up sliding down as you attempt sleep).

The new Business Class will hit Lufty's fleet beginning with their fresh-off-the-line Boeing 747-8 in only a few weeks. Following this, we hope for a swift fleet-wide rollout, but there's not definite dates on that quite yet.

Trust us when we say that every bit of this 3-billion-Euro in-flight upgrade is for the better. Sure, travelers should be excited for the 6' 5" lie-flat bed, the 15" seatback TV screens and new materials, but perhaps the sweetest perk of the new seats will be massively increased personal space.

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Frontier Adds Seats, Reduces Legroom, Has a Sad.

The disappearing legroom is on the move, and it looks like the smaller seats are making their way over to Frontier. The airline seems to be working to reshape and restructure things all in hopes of making more cash, so this seems like just the latest attempt to raise more funds while packing in more passengers. Brett Snyder—AKA the Cranky Flier—has already shared his thoughts on what Frontier is thinking, so this appears to be all part of the plan.

Frontier is sending some Airbus A320s into the hangar for a little bit of an airplane refurbishment, and when the dust settles passengers will be rewarded with more cramped seats and less legroom. They’re adding six more seats to the planes, and that should allow for up to 168 paying passengers to fly in and around the nifty fifty—or at least the lower 48.

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All Around Premium Business Class on LAN Airlines to Chile

Two words, or, rather, one hyphenated word: lie-flat. On a 10.5-hour direct flight overnight, how low your seat goes should be concern numero uno. The Premium Business Class cabin on LAN's Boeing 767 is made of 30 true lie-flat seats, meaning there's no angle when it's all the way down, and you're sleeping for 7 hours on the way to Chile. BOOM.

Of course that's just a small part of Biz Class on LAN, but the rest is experiential...wining, dining, catching up on 30 Rock, you know. We'll have more on the meals early next week, so for now enjoy our slew of photos, and the hard facts below.

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Inside Economy Class on LAN Airlines' Long-Haul Boeing 767s

At 10 hours, 50 minutes, the LAN Airlines direct flight (LA 533) between New York-JFK and Santiago de Chile-Arturo Merino Benitez International isn't anything to sniff at. Longer than a Europe hop but shorter than an Asia haul, the South America jaunt is enough time to enjoy a leisurely dinner, a movie and a quality snooze—yes, even in Economy Class.

Economy is 191 seats behind only 30 Premium Business seats up front on a LAN 767-300ER. On an A340-300, you'll find a few more seats, but nothing too different. Regardless, you're in that ergonomic, upholstered seat for the long haul to the southern hemisphere.

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American Airlines Will Have Premium Economy and Will Call it 'Main Cabin Extra'

Premium Economy—it's so hot right now. It's so hot in fact, that even American Airlines is getting in on the smidge-more-space game with a just-announced new class of service: Main Cabin Extra.

"Main Cabin Extra" isn't much of an upgrade compared to what other carriers are doing for Premium Economy, but it does create a couple perks to appeal to economy passengers who can't splurge for business, but will part with a few more dollars for more inches.

Here's what you'll get, at a cost of between $8-$108 each way additional*:

· 4-6 inches more of legroom.
· Priority boarding.
· A seat in the first few rows of economy.

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Cathay Pacific's New Economy Seats: The End of Numb Butt Syndrome?

Every once in a great while, an airline decides it's finally time to do something for the flyers in the back of the plane. Yep, we're talking about Economy Class. For 2012, the big Economy seat news comes from Cathay Pacific, who've just taken delivery of a shiny Boeing 777-300ER outfitted not only with the new Premium Economy class, but with totally redesigned seats for Economy.

The differences between old and new Economy are huge. Old Cathay econ meant shell seats, which had the upside of not reclining back onto the person behind you, but the downside that, instead, you reclined in a slide down and forward, which limited knee space and quickly made your butt go numb. We say this from experience as frequent Cathay economy flyers who've experienced the economy class Numb Butt Syndrome far too many times.

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How Do DJ Max Graham's Knees Fit in One of Lufthansa's Newer, Slimmer Economy Seats?

And now a dispatch from DJ Max Graham, who's somewhere off in the world...

This past weekend, I did a quick Frankfurt to Amsterdam turnaround. I was pleasantly suprised to find Lufthansa’s newish “ultra thin” seats on my plane. I’m just a touch over six feet tall and can rarely sit with my knees square forward; but, thanks to the ingenious design of these seats (by Recaro), i was actually quite comfortable, for economy.

Lufthansa had Recaro build these seats specifically for them, in order to both save fuel (lighter seats mean less fuel used) and make servicing easier. Nonetheless, the real benefits come for the passengers. The seat was as cozy and comfy as I would expect from an economy upright, but the usual padding behind the lower back is gone—leaving it ultra thin. :

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New Seats, New Screens, and Plenty More New Stuff Coming to Delta's 747s

When Delta gobbled up Northwest Airlines a couple of years ago the newly combined carrier acquired a few Boeing 747s in need of a little refresh and refurbishment—especially in coach. Delta has been focused on upgrading and updating all different areas of their airline, but now it’s finally time for the 747 to head into the hangar for a flyer friendly interior.

Changes are coming to both the front and the back of the plane, but we’ll start by dreaming about what’s going on up front. Gone are the clamshell seats that were kicking around from the Northwest days, as it’s now time to bring BusinessElite passengers some lie-flat seats with direct access to the aisle.

Those lucky enough to score a seat up front will enjoy around 80 inches of seating surface where they can stretch out, and that’s all while you’re enjoying like 300 movies and 88 hours of TV via a 15.4” video screen. There’s no middle seats or seats facing towards the back of the plane either, so the herringbone design kind of guarantees that you’ll have an awesome flight.

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The Debut of Cathay Pacific's New Premium Economy is Nigh

Okay so we have good news and bad news.

The good news: Cathay Pacific's super new Premium Economy seats are now somewhat open for booking. The bad news: they are still no pictures of the seats and flying in them will cost well over double the price of normal economy.

Searching the Cathay site, we found 14,970 HKD ($1,930 USD) for a mid-April roundtrip between Hong Kong and Sydney in Premium Economy. Searching the same dates for regular economy seats, we find the total to be 4,140 HKD ($534 USD). That's quite a huge difference for this 9-hour direct flight, but then it is 9 hours...

So when can you snuggle up for a long flight in these new seats? Well, the Hong Kong-Sydney route will be the first to break them in, beginning in early March. Following that, it's the Hong Kong to Toronto/Vancouver/New York routes and then Hong Kong to London/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Europe and more through December 2013. The planes getting the fun new seats will be Cathay's Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 747-400, selected Airbus A330-300 and Airbus A340-300.

Here's a refresher of all the perks coming to the new Premium Economy cabin:

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