My sisters, nieces and I are celebrating the nieces' graduations from college and high school with a trip to Venice and Paris. Venice is our first stop so that we can have a non-stop flight home from Paris after all the revelry. The problem is with the parameters the sisters have given me, the Minister of Transportation, for this trip. One sister wants non-stop from the East Coast, and the other sister and her daughters want premium economy because they are all legs at 6'. They are in CLE and I'm in PHL. From my research, the only direct flights from the USA to VCE are Delta from JFK and American from PHL; however, neither have premium economy seats available on 6/19. So, non-stop sister is going to have to bite the bullet and have a stop somewhere in Europe.

I've found seats on Air France from JFK via CDG. I know that British Airways via LHR is an option. Are there other options I'm missing? June 19 is the only date that is good for everyone. I know that if we had not procrastinated with planning, we would have more options.

Thanks in advance.

You could also fly on Lufthansa in premium economy and connect in Frankfurt. That should be at least no more painful than connecting at LHR and possibly equal to CDG.

in the summer, UA flies direct from EWR, however no PE, only Y or J but I have seen decent award availability in J on this route. The route is planned to fly from May 5 to September 21, 2016.

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"From my research, the only direct flights from the USA to VCE are Delta from JFK and American from PHL; however, neither have premium economy seats available on 6/19."

AA does not offer Premium Economy class on any of its flights (at least, not yet). But did you check to see whether the AA aircraft flying PHL-VCE offers Main Cabin Extra (MCE) seats for an upcharge? These seats will have extra legroom.

how do premium seats (not premium economy class) compare on AA/DL/UA?

Determine if they actually want a *good* premium economy product and service - or just more legroom.

If it's just more legroom, then there's probably some availability on those AA and DL flights. You'd just search regular coach fares and select the seat assignment as an add-on. A search engine that looks for true premium economy won't show any U.S. carriers (yet).

If they do indeed want a full premium economy experience, then they'll need a European carrier and a connection at their hub. If you're going to search fares on true PE, you might as well search J fares as well...never know when you might find a discount-J fare in the same ballpark as PE. (I can never fully predict when J is going to be $3,000 vs. $1,200 each way, but believe it or not $1,200 sometimes shows up.)

Existing AA and UA premium seats are no difference but the legroom. No change in service that I could tell. On some AA types, the MCE seats happen to be in a quasi-private cabin simply because of where the bulkheads are located. Our ORD-DUS flight last summer was like this...I think a 767. It was a nice, quiet seat with just two rows in the cabin.

Delta appears to throw in upgraded food and free drinks. I've never flown it though. Nor do I know if they tend to price it higher than AA MCE or UA E+.

I received an email recently about AA starting to roll out a true Premium Economy product in 2016. Don't recall what markets/types will get it first.

A good Premium Economy ticket *can* get expensive. I've seen them get closer to J than Y on occasion. The basic extra-legroom seats on U.S. carriers are just a fixed add-on to whatever the going coach fare is.

Thanks, everyone. I checked and Delta has "Delta Comfort" seats with more legroom and priority boarding which should make my Amazonian sister and nieces happy. There are plenty of these seats available on the direct JFK -> VCE flight, so non-stop sister is happy, too.

I think I have flown Delta twice in my life, so I was unfamiliar with what they have.