This weekend, we leave for our Safari trip to the South African Bushveld and are of course flying LH from home in the States, through Frankfurt and onto Johannesburg.

Earlier this year when planning the trip, Premium Economy fares were on sale for extremely good prices and I could not resist booking a roundtrip for only $2200, especially since the fares booked into fare class ‘E’ which means 150% mileage credit.   Another reason for booking this trip and fare class was to ensure that I would have enough miles to qualify for SENATOR with Miles & More.     Based on my calculations, I’ll cross the SEN threshold somewhere over Greenland on the way home.   More on my path to SEN in a future post….

When I compared Business Class fares that were pricing at $6000-$7000 it was a no brainer to book the Prem Eco ticket and save the $5000 to book 2 Business Class tickets when they go on sale throughout the year in the mid-$2000 area.   Besides, I was not going to earn any additional miles.

I’ve flown Prem Eco earlier this year between New York and Frankfurt, and quite honestly, I was impressed with the leg room and comfort of the seat.   I also felt that the cabin crew paid quite a bit of attention to us, similar to my experiences in Business class.   It was that experience that had me come back to try Prem Eco once again.

However this time it is not just a 7 hour jump across the pond.   With this itinerary, I fly 9 hours from Chicago to Frankfurt, spend 8 hours in FRA plane spotting (I need to track down the last 5 LH planes that I’m missing to have all of them on ‘film’) and then get on an A380 in Prem Eco and head south for 9-10 hours to Jo’Burg.     Over a span of almost 30 hours, I will be in a Premium Economy seat for 18-20 hours.   And the return flights are identical, which means that I’ll spend nearly 40 hours in Premium Economy during this Holiday.

It will be interesting to see if my optimism is still in place during the course of my flights.   But a trip like this will allow me to put the Prem Eco travel experience to the test under different conditions (daytime vs. overnight flights for example) and come back to you with my thoughts and opinions.

My wife you ask?  yep, she flying First Class on LH a day ahead of me.    She kept talking about something called an ‘FCT’ and babbling about rubber ducks……weird.