Review: Air New Zealand's Sky Couch 2023/24

After waiting five years, we were finally brave enough to take Sienna on her first FOR REAL trip that involved sleeping on a flight. Admittedly, I was pretty nervous about how she would do on a 13-hour flight to New Zealand and Australia – we definitely couldn’t afford to fly Business so we booked researched and booked the Sky Couch on Air New Zealand for our direct LA – Auckland flights.  For just an additional $200/person each way, you get an economy class row with seats that convert to a bed via footrests that lock in place at a 180 degree angle.  They provide a thin comforter/mattress that lays on top of the seats plus the same thicker pillows that those traveling up front get for you to make a bed out of, whether using 1, 2 or all 3 seats. For an additional $100/person (so $300 total per person each way), they will provide you with a 4th seat in the middle row of seats next to the Sky Couch rows. Compared to what Economic Plus (~$6K/person) and Business (~$11K/person) cost for our trip, this was a downright steal! Although the option to book the 4th seat wasn't available for us on the return leg, our total round trip flight cost for for LA-Auckland and Sydney-Auckland-LA came out to just over $9K during peak season travel (we were there in Dec/early Jan).

Here are the Pros and Cons of our experience:

Pros

• Layflat seats are a game changer for kids - Sienna (who, at travel time was about 40 inches tall) was able to lay flat on both long haul legs, whether with 2 or 3 seats expanded. For me, I was able to lay flat with her as well on the way to Auckland as we had the 4th seat for Rich, which was great. Now, I'm short and only measure 5'2" and was able to fairly comfortably lay flat. Taller adults would need to lay diagonal to stretch out or bend their knees - or sleep sitting up the way I did on the way back. On the return flight, Rich had to sit in the 3rd seat, so we only extended 2 seats - I sat with my back against the window and switched between having my legs bent or extending onto Rich's lap. This didn't make for a great night of sleeping for me, but having my legs elevated was still great as I had none of the swelling that Rich did sitting up. I'm also a TERRIBLE sleeper, so you may be able to doze off in that position just fine.

• Sleep space - if you're able to lay the entire row flat, I actually thought that the amount of sleeping space we got on the Sky Couch was better than the Business class lie-down seats – certainly if traveling solo and getting the whole bed to yourself (I did see some rows with only one adult sleeping in them), but also for Sienna and I. You have a bit more room to move around as the bed is wider than the Business class seat.

• Larger pillows and blankets - aside from the comforter they provide to use as a mattress, you get the larger pillows (in addition to the standard Economy class pillows, so you end up with double the pillows) that they get up front as well as decent blankets. We were able to make pretty decently comfortable beds for Sienna and I to sleep on with all of this.

Cons

• No other frills - you're still traveling in Economy, so there's no extra leg room or amenities outside of the ability to turn your row into a bed. The food wasn't great - dinner service was ok and definitely edible; breakfast eggs not so much. But given that we took off at 8pm and landed 13 hours later (similar timing on way home), we spent most of the flight sleeping, so the onboard services weren’t quite as important on this flight. 

In all, it was a good experience for us - we are going to experiment with getting one of these inflatable foot rest pillows and book Economy Plus seats for our next trip to Europe, where Economy Plus tends to be cheaper and the airlines don't offer Sky Couch seats. But if you're traveling on Air NZ, I'd definitely recommend giving Sky Couch a try!