An Amtrak business class upgrade on the six-hour Ethan Allen Express from New York to Burlington, Vermont, costs roughly $80 extra on top of a round-trip fare of about $180, but the main perk turns out to be a slightly different seating layout rather than a meaningfully superior journey.
That was the finding of Business Insider reporter Taylor Rains, who paid for the upgrade on a recent trip and rode both classes across the full round trip. Her verdict: coach was just as comfortable and quiet for less money.
What the Amtrak Business Class Upgrade Actually Includes
Business class on the Ethan Allen Express sits in a separate car connected to coach via the café and lounge. The lounge is open to all passengers regardless of ticket type.
The seating is arranged in a 2×1 layout rather than the 2×2 configuration in coach, giving some passengers a solo window seat. The chairs are large red recliners, similar to the grey ones in coach, and add a leg rest, cupholder, and curtains. There is no assigned seating, however, and the solo “throne” seats were already taken by the time Rains boarded at Poughkeepsie, a few stops down the line from New York.
Bulkhead seats lack tray tables, which limits their usefulness for anyone hoping to work on a laptop during the journey.
The one included freebie is a single non-alcoholic drink from the café car: a soda, water, or coffee. Food is otherwise available for purchase, with Amtrak’s lunch and dinner options starting at around $6 for a hot dog and ranging up to burgers, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, and salads. Rains brought her own dinner on the outbound leg but bought an $8.50 mac and cheese on the way home, which she described as surprisingly tasty.
Lounge Access and the New York Pass Question
Business class passengers departing New York Penn Station do not automatically gain entry to the Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge there. That facility is largely reserved for first-class passengers, private-car travellers, and elite status holders.
A Single Visit Pass for the Metropolitan Lounge, which Amtrak introduced in August 2025 to give coach-class guests purchase access, costs $50 at the New York Moynihan Train Hall location and $35 at most other Metropolitan Lounge sites including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland and Washington DC, according to the Amtrak station lounges page. Amtrak Guest Rewards members can also redeem 1,500 points for a pass. Business class passengers do have complimentary lounge access in Portland, as well as in the Private Waiting Rooms in St. Paul/Minneapolis and St. Louis, but the New York location is not included.
There are no lounges along the Vermont route itself, so for this particular journey the question of lounge access is largely moot. It is worth bearing in mind, though, for anyone departing from New York and expecting a pre-departure lounge as part of the business class proposition.
Older Trains, New Fleet on the Way
The Ethan Allen Express still runs on Amtrak’s legacy fleet. The route extended from Rutland to Burlington in September 2022, adding three new stations (Vergennes-Ferrisburgh, Middlebury, and Burlington), and the Vermont Agency of Transportation also offers discounted fares within Vermont, capped at $17 between most stations on the route.
The older cars will eventually give way to new “Airo” trainsets built by Siemens Mobility as part of a broader modernisation programme. Amtrak confirmed in May 2026 that the first Airo trainset destined for Northeast Regional service had completed manufacturing and left the Siemens factory. The contract, valued at $7.3 billion for up to 83 multi-powered trains, was reported by ESPA Rail. The Vermont route is not among the first corridors in line for the new equipment.
For now, the coach seats on the legacy Vermont cars remain comfortable by any reasonable measure: deep recline, decent cushioning, and working power ports. Business class mirrors those basics and adds the 2×1 layout and a few minor extras, but does not transform the experience.
Rains concluded she would not pay for the upgrade again. Coach on this corridor, she argued, already beats most airline economy cabins for comfort, and there is no middle seat to worry about. Unless Amtrak upgrades the Vermont route to its incoming Airo fleet and rethinks what business class includes, the $80 premium is hard to justify for anything beyond a guaranteed solo seat on a busy train.