The flights for our holiday were picked primarily based on schedule. As a result, we ended up flying with 5 different airlines, so we experienced a lot of variety in seating, amenities and service.
The Qantas flight from Perth to Brisbane was very good. I slept on the plane (I think being unable to sleep with excitement the night before played a part in that though) and the flight was over much more quickly than I expected. The Qantas flight from Brisbane to Perth on the way back... not so great. Mum had a bit of a panic attack about the lack of leg room, and while it didn't bother me at first, it did get to me over time. And Qantas really needs to put in individual TV screens. But the main problem was that there must have been something wrong with the food because halfway through I started feeling sick and ended up going through 5 sick bags before I made it home to a nice still bed. On the plus side, though, the flight attendants were excellent -- checked on me every time they went past, let me use the business class toilet, offered me oxygen. So in that sense I'd rather be sick on a Qantas flight than on a no-frills airline.
Mum wasn't too keen on the idea of the long flight right from the start, so we decided to go Premium Economy with V Australia between Brisbane and LAX in both directions. Best decision ever. The main plus was the awesome extra room, but we also enjoyed the little self-service bar as a place to wander when we were sick of sitting and the extra service we got. We also got priority access going through security in Brisbane and because we were one of the first off the plane had a shorter queue at immigration on arrival. We didn't get any perks at LAX on the way back but that may have been because it was very quiet and there was no queue at security anyway (side note: Terminal 3 at LAX is horrible).
We were expecting our Virgin America flight from LAX to Boston to be quite nice but in the end it was a bit meh. The seating seemed so cramped compared to Premium Economy and we hardly ever saw the flight attendants. The only good thing about this flight was the novelty of being able to use the touch-screen to order an apple juice. And it was shorter than scheduled.
JetBlue was marginally better. The flight attendants were nicer although it was still limited service. JetBlue advertises itself as having lots of legroom but it didn't seem any different to the other US domestic flights. I think perhaps the seat pitch measurement is a misleading way of measuring room, because the size of the seat impacts a lot on how much leg room you get, and that isn't advertised anywhere. At least this flight (Boston to Orlando) was very short.
We were worried about Delta because we hadn't heard as many good things about it as the other airlines we flew, but it ended up being our favourite of the US domestic legs. It had similar-looking seats to Virgin America and JetBlue but somehow it seemed to give you more legroom for the seat pitch.
One thing I noticed on all the flights is that none of them have the nice koala ears that Qantas has (apparently they're called 'wings' in America). I kind of rely on those koala ears to sleep -- if I don't have them out I wake myself up whenever my head falls over. Would have been really happy with the seats on V Australia and Delta if they had koala ears that folded out close to 90 degrees like Qantas does.
