If you’re sitting in the front of the airplane, your seatmates are very likely to be married, male, and on their way to California or Florida.
Have you ever looked around the first class cabin and wondered who your fellow flyers were, and where they were going?
A recent YouGov survey discovered the most common demographic among first class flyers is Millennial married males who call the West Coast home.
First Class Flyers Travel More Frequently with Deliberate Agendas
To determine the typical first class flyer, YouGov used a profiling tool that “collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire.” Their survey is “nationally representative of the online population and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race.”
Their findings discovered that the first class cabin was primarily male, with 67% of all luxury flyers identifying as men. Over one-third are from the Millennial generation, while 38% were the parent of a child under 18.
When it comes to where they come from, one-third live in the Western United States, with 20% coming from California alone. Comparatively, 16% of first class flyers came from the Midwest, while 15% hailed from the Northeast.
The typical first class flyer is less likely to plan their trips around cost, but rather about what to do once they get to their destination. Among the profile, 44% picked a location based on temperature, 32% made decisions based around activities, while around one-quarter planned around the nightlife. Meanwhile, travelers in the main cabin were more likely to be budget conscious, go sightseeing on their travels, and engage in outdoor or cultural activities.
With more luxury flyers in the west, it may come as no surprise that the top destination is California, followed by Florida. New York, Las Vegas, and Hawaii rounded out the top five places for first class travel in the United States. For international trips, luxury flyers chose The Maldives ahead of any other location.
But which airline is the favorite among first class passengers? Delta Air Lines was the top choice among both luxury and economy flyers, with nearly one-in-four first class travelers choosing the Atlanta-based airline. American Airlines came in a very close second, being the choice of 23% profiled. United Airlines and JetBlue were third and fourth, while Southwest Airlines was preferred by only 6% of those flying up front.
