I know this goes without saying for travel pros, but I was reminded again today that it always pays to check the price of a premium fare.
One of the things we do at Award Expert is ensure that it doesn’t make more sense for a client to buy tickets instead of using miles.
Today a client needed to travel from Orlando to Washington (as part of a multi-city domestic trip) and was perfectly happy with economy class. He wanted to travel in the late morning, nonstop, and into Washington National Airport.
The trip is just around the corner and economy class fares on American, Southwest, and JetBlue (the three nonstop options) were not great. But I noticed that a first class ticket on American Airlines was only $29 more than economy and alerted the client.
He was quite happy to pay the reasonable difference in price…$29 for priority check-in, complimentary checked baggage, priority-boarding, a more comfortable seat, and even lunch onboard just made immense sense.
While American (and United and Delta) make it easy to compare first class versus economy class, if you are using an OTA like Kayak, Orbitz, or Expedia you will not see how cheap an “upgrade” to first class is.
U.S. airlines have strategically (and dramatically) dropped the price of paid first class fares in recent years. Why? I think airlines realize they can give away complimentary upgrades or entice customers to spend just marginally more and book first class outright. The result? More people paying for first class and more money in the pocket of the airline. I can personally attest that this strategy is working, even when the difference is more than $30…
CONCLUSION
The moral of the story: just check. There are even instances in which it is sometimes cheaper to buy a first class ticket than economy class ticket!
image: AA
Absolutely true.
Recently I booked a MH roundtrip where BC was priced below EC. This was for a flight still about 6 weeks out.
One of the more extreme examples I’ve seen of this was on Condor. FRA-AUS in August priced out at $780 for Y, $940 for Premium Economy – and $890 for J. Seriously, just $110 to upgrade from 30″ pitch in coach to a lie-flat seat on an 11 1/2 hour flight. And actually $50 less than Premium Economy!
Couple of years ago, we drove to MKE to fly back to LAX via ORD. The price for first class flying out of MKE was HALF the price of flying coach out of ORD. BTW, the connecting flight would have been the same! This was for 4 people so even after deducting the cost of renting the car, we came out ahead big time.
Hi Matthew I’m flying out of Bangkok on September the 4 th which is flexible, to Auckland New Zealand. On Malaysian airline my current carrier the trip over was a killer as I had a back operation last year and can’t lie in a reclined position.
To upgrade to business class my agent has quoted $3000. Which seems a lot for a 12 hour flight.
I also have 92,000 fantastic frequent flyer points.
Can you suggest anything ?
Many thanks
Dawn
Hi Dawn,
In what program are your points in?