Since the pandemic, the cost of business class seats has risen far more than the rate of inflation. And generally speaking, most people aren’t really up for selling a kidney to get a lie-flat seat, even if you do have a spare.
I have flown internationally in coach a few times over the years, but I’m almost 6’4”, so sitting in a coach seat for 12 hours is akin to waterboarding, but without the hot CIA guy – which means that for me, business class is less of a luxury and more of a necessity.
So, what are the best options for finding decent business class airfares when the airlines don’t really want you to?
IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO PAY FOR A TICKET
- Shop (and set a Price Alert) on Google Flights
Google Flights is a fantastic place to compare fares across various airlines.
https://www.google.com/travel/flights
Here’s what’s so great about it: they offer prices you can’t find on the airline websites.
Example: my husband and I booked tickets to Europe through American. Later, we wanted to change the date of our outbound flights in order to spend a few days in London first. I began checking on Google Flights, and initially, the fare to change to this earlier travel day was like $1,000 more per person. But I kept checking back, and finally found a great set of flights for LESS than we’d already paid.
So I, clicked through to the American site to book it (there are links at the bottom of the search results page on Google Flights to take you directly to the airline’s site to purchase the ticket). Then, I decided to call AA instead, since I wasn’t sure how the credit with the previously purchased ticket would work.
The woman at AA couldn’t find the fare – the cheapest option she had was $600 more per person than the fare on Google Flights. She finally confided that Google Flights gets fares that the AA agents themselves can’t find – or match.
SO…when you find one of these fares on Google Flights, click through and book it directly with the airline. Don’t call. (If you have a previously purchased ticket, like we did, familiarize yourself with how refunds or travel credits work. In that case, while you have the new flights open in one browser window, open another window and cancel your original flights. Then book the new flights and apply your travel credit.)
As I mentioned, though, if you don’t find a good fare one day, check on another. The fares change literally every day!
Google Flights will also let you track the price. Input your cities and dates, compare flights, then pretend like you’re booking the set of flights you’d like to take (i.e. ones that meet your time criteria and are within striking distance of a price you’d actually pay). You will see a toggle switch that says, “Track prices”. Switch that on, and you’ll get email alerts as the price changes.
- Call Skylux, BusinessClass.com or Aran Grant
These three companies are vetted business class consolidators. They buy blocks of seats on popular routes and can offer considerably lower rates than the airlines themselves. (I’ve saved $1,000 per ticket with them.) But be sure to compare their prices with those offered by the airlines; depending on the airline and route, sometimes the savings is only marginal (say $100 or less). At that point, it may make more sense to buy directly from the airline so that, if something goes wrong, like a cancelled flight, you have more leverage.
- Use the Travel Portal for Your High-End Credit Card
If you hold a high-annual-fee credit card like the American Express Platinum card, for example, you can use that issuer’s travel portal (in this case, American Express Travel) to get better fares. Once you sign in as a cardholder, you’ll find savings that can vary from literally none (in other words, they’re offering the same price as the airline) to up to $1,000 or so less.
- Exchange your Ticket for a Lower-Priced One
Since the pandemic, virtually all major airlines have offered free changes – and they continue to. Which means that you can book and cancel flights with no penalty. So, if you book flights and then keep an eye on the price and discover it has gone down (fares are tremendously dynamic these days), you can cancel your flights and rebook at the new, lower price.
Just be aware that in most cases, the airline will only hold the fare difference as a credit towards a future ticket. They won’t refund it. So, if you don’t want to lose that money (and who does), you’ll need to plan to use it for another ticket on that airline within one year. (The rules for this vary, though – on AA, because I have middle-tier elite status, or because it was a business class ticket – I’m not sure which applied – the rebooking window for the ticket I cancelled was 5 years.)
- Discount sites – A Warning
There are an abundance of consolidators and online travel agencies with names you’ve never heard of. If you use an app or website like Momondo, Skyscanner, etc (they’re excellent for checking prices), you’ll encounter significantly lower prices from some of the “no name” sites that come up in the results. Friends of ours used one of these that had iffy ratings, and the company turned out to be fine. (When one of their flights was cancelled, the agency worked to get them on a new flight.)
But that sort of experience seems to be more the exception than the rule. Be sure to check out the reviews for that website before you book, and if there are a lot of negative ones…you’ve been warned. You may have little recourse.
FYI: We had an issue with LATAM when we were traveling to Peru, and LATAM was doing everything they could to make it impossible for us to get our money back (even though we’d booked a totally refundable fare). I filed a complaint with the FAA (it’s easy and you can do it online), and LATAM quickly refunded my money, because airlines don’t want these complaints logged against them. But the FAA doesn’t handle travel websites, only airlines.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/acr/com_civ_support/filing_complaint
IF YOU WANT TO USE MILES FOR AN AWARD TICKET
- Keep Checking Back
As with paid fares, mileage redemption prices are very dynamic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rebooked flights for a lower mileage amount because I’m diligent about checking back. And since the airlines are not charging fees for changes, you can redeposit those miles and book the new ticket with no penalty. This does, however, require a regular commitment to checking back.
- Expert Flyer
What if you don’t want to spend all that time checking back? There’s a fantastic website that will do it for you. It’s called Expert Flyer, and, if you’re looking for a nonstop flight – say, Chicago to London – you can input that flight and get an email or text the instant that seat drops into availability. (Just know that you have to act fast.) This is particularly for Milesaver-type seats, since Anytime seats (at outrageous redemption rates) are pretty much always available.
You can also set up alerts for connections, but this can be dicier, since both parts of the connection need to drop into availability at the same time, which usually doesn’t happen. This service works best for a single flight.
Expert Flyer is a subscription-based platform. It costs $9.99/month or $99.99 a year, but can be worth its weight in gold if you’re able to snag Milesaver seats and cut the cost of your award in half (or less).
Example: We had coach awards going to Australia years ago (we were going to try toughing it out for 16 hours), and the day before our departure, two business class seats dropped into availability for the LA-Sydney nonstop. We snagged them.
- Try Segment-to-Segment Pricing
This Expert Flyer option also brings up another possibility: segment-to-segment pricing. Sometimes you can find a better deal by pricing out two awards. For example, we were looking for an award to Europe that flew into Inverness, Scotland and out of Edinburgh. The award rates were sky high. But we found a much cheaper option by getting a roundtrip award ticket to London and either paying for cheap economy flights (the flights are only an hour-ish, and the total cost for the two add-on flights was about $150) or using miles.
- Have Date Flexibility?
This may seem obvious, but if you have some flexibility with your dates, consider trying a day or two before, or after. Sometimes the difference in award costs can make whatever hotel cost you incur more than worth it. For example, if you want to arrive in your destination on a Saturday and are looking for a Friday flight, you may have much better luck finding a Wednesday flight. (Tuesday and Wednesday are the least-traveled days.) This has frequently worked for us.
- Try Alternate Cities
Consider flying out of a nearby city if that’s an option (particularly if it’s a bigger airport with more competition). We live in Palm Springs, so we can fly out of there, or, LA, Burbank, Ontario, San Diego or Orange County. All the alternate cities are about a two-hour drive. Sure, you have to get to that city (we typically book a one-way car rental), but it can mean the difference between flying coach and flying business.
And really, who doesn’t look good holding a glass of champers in a lie-flat pod?
