Another member flew Business class from Los Angeles to Melbourne and found the service from the crew to be excellent. However, this member did find the seat a little uncomfortable for sleeping in given the narrow foot well.

Qantas’ 787 Premium Economy seat is a brand new design which has been advertised as “revolutionary”. While comfortable, the consensus among our members is that the Premium Economy seats lack sufficient legroom.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that 38 inches simply isn't enough, and that at least 40 inches would be more appropriate – as this would deliver upwards of an extra two inches (5cm) at the knees.

So while Qantas' designer David Caon has delivered what is in most other respects a superb premium economy seat, the design has been short-changed by the implementation.

When there’s only 38 inches of pitch to begin with, when your seat is upright and the person in front is all the way back, that reduces your available space to 28.5 inches at the tightest point (near their headrest), making it incredibly difficult to get out and access the aisle, particularly for the centre and window passengers.

There’s still ample room to work on a laptop when the seat in front is all the way back, owing to that seat being slanted – but there’s less room for your knees, particularly if using the paddle as a footrest.

I made that discovery when the passenger in front swapped from ‘full upright’ to ‘full recline’ rather quickly, which saw my slightly-tilted inflight entertainment screen painfully crash into my kneecaps, even when my own seat was all the way back for maximum space, and rendered the footrest paddle unusable for that purpose unless positioned down near the cabin floor:

I then tried to use the net for my feet and the paddle as a leg rest instead, but didn’t find that particularly comfortable or sturdy – as resting my feet in the net pulled the paddle forward and away from me, so I resorted to sticking my feet out each side of the net, unsupported, just to have the paddle in a suitable spot.

Still unhappy with this, I spent a further 90 minutes trying various positions involving the foot net and leg paddle in an attempt to get comfortable for sleeping, but regardless of which I tried, I didn’t find success, and was left wanting the traditional, solid leg rest of Qantas’ last-generation premium economy seat (shown below).

Also regarding personal space, it’s very difficult to stand up and access the aisle when behind a fully-reclined seat – particularly for centre and window passengers who are further away from that aisle – which saw numerous travellers on my flight walking on the actual seats to get across, and jumping down into their seat and landing with a floor-shaking ‘thud’.

All things considered, on the 14-hour trek from Melbourne to LA, I managed to get literally one hour of sleep. Passengers talking loudly in the cabin didn’t help, but honestly, neither did the seat pitch, the foot net/leg paddle or my seat’s position next to the rear curtain, where I found I was bumped at least half the time somebody walked through, most commonly, when returning from the restroom.

Combine that with being awoken by ‘seat jumpers’ who found this easier than navigating behind reclined seats, and the regular disturbances made anything more than a nap difficult to achieve: and I arrived in LA dreary and red-eyed, despite normally sleeping quite well on planes.

For example, on my last Boeing 787 premium economy flight – from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney with Vietnam Airlines, on an off-the-shelf seat with a traditional swing-up leg rest and 42 inches of pitch – I slept for 4.5 hours of the eight-hour journey.

By contrast, on Qantas’ Boeing 787 which lacks a traditional leg rest and where the pitch is a smaller 38 inches – not just proving tight, but also inducing passengers to hop over seats, making sleep for others more difficult – I managed only an hour’s kip, which is what I’d expect of regular economy, not premium economy.