Inflation has been with us for the past couple of years, which has affected everything from potato chips to Broadway show tickets (from these examples, you can see where my priorities lie). But it’s had a particularly onerous effect on business class air pricing, which seems to have increased far more than the rate of inflation. resulting in the need to find creative ways to pay for it. I’ve personally taken to working the corner, but at 25 cents a pop, it’s slow going.
Part of this dramatic increase in prices is due to airlines cutting routes or frequency since the pandemic, which has made planes fuller and allowed them to charge a premium for these seats, since demand in business class is somewhat inelastic.
Another aspect is the 1-2-1 trend of seats. A number of airlines used to have business class seating that had as many as six to eight seats across; and now, as airlines redo their business class cabins or buy new planes, they’re configuring them as four across (1-2-1), which obviously lowers the number of seats they can sell and raises the price of each individual seat.
This means that a business class seat to Europe that could once be had for, say, $3,500 is now closer to $5,000.
It’s one reason why, at Brand g, we’re creating many more trips that are back-to-back, so that you only have to fly to Europe or Asia or Africa once.
This increase in prices – along with airlines cutting the value of their frequent flyer miles – has also made mileage awards outsized. While you can still score the occasional great award if you check back constantly, they are getting fewer and farther between. For example, I’m an American flyer, and I found summer tickets from LA to London for 57,500 miles – plus a hefty $700 “fuel surcharge” – each way, which amounts to a “cost”of about $1,500-1,600 each way, which is a bargain. Typically these days, that LA to London flight is 150k-200k miles each way, which amounts to a “cost” of about $6,000+ roundtrip, which makes buying the ticket cheaper than using miles.
HOW TO SCORE BUSINESS CLASS SEATS FOR LESS
IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO PAY FOR A TICKET
- Set a Price Alert on Google Flights
Google Flights is a great place to compare fares across various airlines. 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.
https://www.google.com/travel/flights
- Skylux, Aran Grant and BusinessClass.com
These are vetted business class consolidators. They have privately negotiated contracts with the airlines and can offer considerably lower rates than the airlines themselves. 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. But sometimes it can be $1,000-2,000 less. (We saved about $1,500 per person on flights to Europe and Asia for our 2024 trips.) Be aware that if you need to make changes or the airline cancels your flight, you need to go to them instead of the airline. They typically charge an (optional) upfront fee of 5-8% of the ticket cost to cover changes/cancellations. Paying this fee to Skylux or Aran Grant doesn’t mean you can make random changes all you want; this fee covers the change fee but does not cover any increase in the cost of your new flights. For example, if there’s a $250 per person change fee and your new tickets are $400 more, you’re still on the hook for that $400.
We recently bought tickets via Aran Grant to Southeast Asia for the Vietnam & Cambodia cruise. The first leg of the outbound was cancelled by the airline. Aran Grant worked to get us an even better connection that the one we purchased.
You’ll see results from these travel agencies pop up on some of the aggregator sites like Kayak.
We especially love an agent named Melchor at Businessclass.com. His email is:
- Buy a Ticket, Then Later Exchange it for a Lower-Priced One
Since the beginning of the pandemic, virtually all major airlines have offered free changes – and they continue to, if your ticket is booked direct with them. 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 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.
We just bought tickets on Icelandair coming back from our summer 2024 Norway cruise. This is an airline we’re highly unlikely to fly again anytime soon; so, since we don’t want to hold a credit on this airline if we would change to cheaper flights or cancel for some reason, we bought the “Premium Flex” fares, which means you can cancel and get all your money back.
Also be aware that, these days, as dynamic as prices are, they don’t seem to go down much as the months go on – they often just keep increasing.
- Discount sites – A Warning
There are an abundance of online travel agencies with names you’ve never heard of. If you use an app or website like Momondo or Skyscanner (which are excellent for checking prices), you’ll encounter significantly lower prices from some of the “no name” travel agency sites that come up in the results. Friends of ours used one of these that had iffy 3-star 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 particular travel agency before you book, and if there are a lot of negative ones…you’ve been warned. You may have little recourse.
IF YOU ENCOUNTER A PROBLEM WITH AN AIRLINE OR ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCY
If you encounter a problem with an airline, file a complaint with the FAA. It’s easy and you can do it online. My husband and I had an issue with LATAM when we were traveling to Peru (it was during the pandemic and we had to cancel our flights), 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 an FAA complaint, and LATAM refunded the money in less than a month. Airlines don’t want these complaints logged against them.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/acr/com_civ_support/filing_complaint
Note that the FAA doesn’t handle issues with online travel agencies, only the airlines themselves. If you have an issue with an online travel agency, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
https://www.bbb.org/file-a-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, New York to Lisbon – 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 typically 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 on Qantas going to Australia years ago (yes, we were going to try toughing it out for 15 hours!), and the day before our departure, two business class seats dropped into availability for the LA-Sydney nonstop. As soon as I got the notification from Expert Flyer, I jumped on the phone with AA (through whom we’d booked the awards) and 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 by using miles.
This can also apply to paid tickets. Friends of ours in Palm Springs got a much better deal flying out of San Francisco to Asia for the Brand g Vietnam & Cambodia trip. Then they just added on a roundtrip flight from Palm Springs to San Francisco.
- 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 costs 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 or Thursday flight. 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 or Orange County. All the alternate cities are a one to 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.
Finding a good fare can definitely entail some work on your part, but it can pay off. Because while we all want to be holding a glass of champers in a lie-flat pod, we don’t want to have to knock over a bank to do it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like good in stripes.
