Seat cushion for long flights

Our young adult sons just flew KLM from west coast to AMS. Then flew Alaska on the new flight from Rome to Seattle. They said the seats on both planes felt like sitting on a thin piece of cardboard. It's absolutely ridiculous.

If you can afford to buy up to Delta One with miles or $$ do so. The seats are comfortable and on the international flights you are given a mattress pad thing to put down on the seat when you do the lie flat seat.

Otherwise, I just sit on the folded blanket they give you in Comfort + after I take it out of the plastic.

I would add to Pam's answer that on my last flight from SEA to CDG and back, I paid extra to sit in premium economy and the seats were absolutely wonderful. The up-pay was about $575 and totally worth it.

This compares to my last flight on Air France in "comfort+" where it was like sitting in a church pew for 10 hours.

(I think they do this deliberately so you'll pay more for a better seat).

-- Mike Beebe

Do it yourself. Buy some 4 inch thick foam rubber. Sit in a chair at home and cut enough
of it for the size of your posterior.

Roll the piece up and carry it through TSA. When on plane, unroll it and sit down.

Easy peasy.

If we fly long haul, we try to be in Delta Premium Select (or on a couple of occasions - Delta One). We have something like this https://a.co/d/01INYrSz for our long haul flights. The cushion packs into a clip on bag that looks like a neck pillow case. I do not start using it until my tush or lower back starts to get tired (not hurting, just a little tired); then I deploy the cushion. It has a pump within the cushion that you press several times (essentially pumping it) to inflate egg crate aspects of the pillow. It is NOT a substitute for a nice comfy Delta One lie flat seat, but our recovery time is much shorter after using them.

When I had a painful hip for several years, I did what Claudia said and made my own cushion. But I used memory foam cut from an old mattress topper we didn't need --- it squishes up to quite a small size. Sometimes I threw one away before the daytime flight home (when I could get up and move around more). It fit into a nylon tent peg bag from REI.