Delta flies some genuinely enormous routes — Atlanta to Johannesburg tops the list at over 13,500 km, followed by Cape Town, then Los Angeles to Melbourne, Sydney and Hong Kong. All five are flown by the Airbus A350-900, and all five offer Premium Select, Delta's premium economy cabin. The question is what that extra comfort actually costs, and the answer varies wildly depending on where you're headed.
Premium Select sits between extra-legroom Comfort and Delta One business class. You get 38 inches of pitch, the same Collins Aerospace MiQ seat the other big US carriers use for premium economy, and a cabin on nearly every Delta widebody — only four of the oldest 767-300ERs miss out, and they're headed for retirement rather than retrofit.
Cash fares tell an interesting story. On the Africa routes, a one-way Premium Select ticket from the US typically runs $3,400 to over $5,100. Flying the reverse direction, from Johannesburg or Cape Town back to Atlanta, prices range from roughly $1,490 up to about $4,700. Australia is a different beast: LA to Melbourne or Sydney rarely tops $3,000 and can dip to around $1,200 one-way. Hong Kong sits in that same affordable band, sometimes from just over $1,000 departing Hong Kong. The pattern comes down to competition — Delta dominates the US–South Africa market out of its enormous Atlanta hub, so it charges accordingly, while the LA–Australia corridor is fiercely contested and the new Hong Kong route faces established rivals.
SkyMiles redemptions follow the same logic. Africa routes routinely price above 300,000 miles one-way in Premium Select, uncomfortably close to Delta One awards, which usually start north of 400,000 miles. Australia bookings typically fall between 120,000 and 300,000 miles, and Hong Kong often comes in under 200,000. Delta miles are generally valued at 1.1 to 1.2 cents each — below the 1.5-cent benchmark considered merely acceptable — so awards can be poor value, though the longest routes occasionally deliver redemptions worth more than two cents per mile.
One catch: the seats are getting scarcer. Delta's A350-900s once had the largest premium economy cabin in the US at 48 seats, but the airline is refitting them with two extra rows of Delta One and one fewer Premium Select row. Premium travel demand is booming while cabin sizes stay conservative, which keeps prices high. The practical takeaway: if you're set on premium economy for a mega-haul flight, the Pacific routes from LA offer far better value than Africa, and it's always worth comparing Premium Select against Delta One — when the gap narrows, the lie-flat seat usually wins.