It’s a trend we’ve been following for a while. The shift to premium seats in the U.S. market since COVID has been consistent through 2024, when we last published this chart. It’s only gotten premium-er.
Looking at schedules through June of 2026 shows what we all knew it would - more business and first-class seats. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. But how the new premium seats are arriving is not as simple as airlines reconfiguring aircraft. Why? Because airlines aren’t reconfiguring aircraft.
The growth in premium seats over economy is largely due to the types of airlines that are adding capacity in the market. Growth has shifted away from the ULCC sector towards the network airlines, where the business class seats also happen to be. The reduction of capacity from Spirit reduces the overall economy seat growth, but very little from premium (the big front seats do actually count as business class in this analysis).
Indeed, when we look at where the growth was as of the start of the year, the primary growth came from the network airlines, and very little from the LCCs or ULCCs. This aligns with the growth in premium and economy seats in the separate analysis.
Premium domestic airlines are growing. Non-premium ones are growing less.
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