Buying business and first class tickets

  Airfare Booking Strategies

Business and first-class seats can be unbelievably expensive. The most luxurious international first-class tickets can cost over $30,000 per person. On shorter notice, the cheapest first-class flights to Europe are around $10,000. Business class is relatively more affordable, but international business class flights are often still $3,500 to $8,000 per person.

Unquestionably, the best way to book these trips is with points or miles. However, on many trips, you simply won't be able to find award availability. Even if there is availability, you may not have enough points. For many people, that means forgoing premium-cabin seats. However, if you highly value sitting up front (and getting a decent night’s sleep), you don’t have to pay retail for business and first class tickets.

International premium-cabin tickets will never come cheap. But, they can often be purchased for much less money than their regular prices.

Expect to frequently be able to reduce the price of a business class ticket to half of its standard price, and save even more money on first-class tickets.

Jump to

• Airline economics
• Amex Platinum International Airline Program
• Wait for sales
• Package discounts
• Business class consolidators
• Purchasing last minute points
• Take advantage of different prices from different cities
• Oneworld / British Airways discount
• Seat auctions

Airline economics

To better understand why you are often able to get significant discounts on business and first-class tickets, it helps to understand the underlying economics.

A significant portion of business and first-class seats are bought by people travelling for business. They aren’t buying these tickets with their own money, their companies are paying for them. There is another set of well-off passengers who are willing to accept traditionally high-fares as the cost of flying in comfort. After all, even a first-class seat is less expensive than a private jet.

Airlines want to sell as many of their business and first class seats as they can. However, if they lower their prices to the level where they would easily sell all their premium seats, they won’t earn as much profit from these less-price-sensitive customers, who would have purchased tickets anyway, even at the higher prices. What the airline really wants to do is to charge sky-high prices to the people who are willing to pay them; and then charge lower-prices to another set of people, where the lower price might make the difference between whether they would purchase the premium seats, or fly economy.

The trick to getting cheaper business class seats is to try to take advantage of the airline’s efforts to unload these extra seats, instead of paying the regular prices, which are designed to extract the maximum value out of less-price-sensitive travelers.

Domestic Tickets

Domestic premium-cabin seats are frequently available for prices that are not that much more than flying coach. While it used to cost 4-5x as much to sit up front, you can now often purchase premium-cabin seats for only a few hundred dollars more. It can be easy to forget this fact if you always search for tickets in economy class. Expanding your search to look for premium-cabin seats may leave you pleasantly surprised.

Because domestic tickets are so frequently “discounted”, many of the strategies described below aren’t that useful. They are focused on international premium-class travel, where discounted prices are harder to find, and where the high prices make alternative approaches more attractive.

Amex Platinum International Airline Program

If you have the Amex Platinum Card, the most straightforward way to save on premium-cabin tickets is to purchase through Amex's "International Airline Program".

Cardholders get airfare discounts of around 10% on premium-economy, business class, and first-class tickets. To get the discount, you need to buy them through Amex Travel and pay for them with their Platinum Card. Discounts are only available for flights that originate in the US and Canada, and can apply to up to 8 tickets. You need to call-in to access the discounted fares and pay $39 surcharge per ticket. Amex IAP Webpage.

Wait for sales

Not that long ago, the prices for business and first-class tickets were relatively fixed. The price only varied based on how far out you booked. In the past few years, airlines have started running more frequent business and first-class fare sales.

• To clear out inventory, airlines often run sales on their premium cabin seats. By having these sales run for a limited length of time, they can reach some price-conscious shoppers, without cannibalizing sales to most business travelers.
• When sales are available, you need to strike quickly. The sale may only last a single day.
• Some airlines allow you to pay a small fee to lock-in the rate for a few days. For any flight into and out of the United States, you always get a free 24-hour hold or cancellation period. Individual airlines often provide options for flights that wouldn’t already be covered or for longer periods of time. For example, United airlines offers an option to place a 3-day or 7-day holdfor a very small fee. To get this option, you’ll need to book directly with the airline, rather than through a 3^rd party website like Orbitz.
• You can easily set up a price alert using Google Flights, so you'll know when prices drop. Ideally, you want to set this up as soon as possible, and hope that tickets go on sale sometime between then and your booking deadline.

• Subscribing to flight deal alert sites can keep you informed about good business and first class deals. Each of the alert services cover both coach and premium-cabin deals. Tracking Flight Deals from Your City

Package discounts

Business and first class seats can be remarkably cheaper when you purchase them as part of a package.

Buying a package is often the best way to find a significant discount on the price of your premium cabin ticket. Sometimes, you can add a hotel stay for a single night, or even a car rental for a single day, and drop the cost of you premium cabin airplane tickets in half. In other words, it is often far cheaper to buy a premium cabin airplane ticket plus a hotel room, than it is to buy the premium class ticket alone.

For example, for a summer trip from New York City to Rome, the best prices for nonstop business class seats were $3,869 per person. But, when combined with a 3-night hotel stay, the cost for the airfare (on Alitalia) dropped to around $1,900 per person (varying a bit, based on the chosen hotel).  Flights on other airlines saw smaller discounts. For example, the nonstop flight on American dropped to about $2,400, significantly cheaper than the regular $3,869 price. If you can find a much better hotel deal elsewhere, you could simply add a single night at the cheapest hotel listed on Expedia, receive this huge discount on your tickets, and then not even bother to stay there.

For some additional examples, look at Frequent Miler’s post on the topic.

While some airline travel sites will only let you book packages where you spend your entire trip at a single hotel, many 3^rd party sites are much more flexible. You can book the hotel for only part of your stay, or book multiple different hotels over the course of your trip.

Business class consolidators

Airfare consolidators purchase tickets in bulk, and then resell them. Not long ago, they were the best way to find less expensive international airfares, regardless of which ticket class you were buying. With changes to the way airline tickets are priced, they are no longer that useful for coach tickets; but they can still get you a better deal on business and first-class fares.

If tickets aren’t already on sale, and you can’t find a good deal through travel “packages”, consolidators are the next place to look.

• Sometimes, but not always, better pricing isn’t available on nonstop flights. Airlines are much more willing to heavily negotiate prices on routes that are primarily controlled by their competitors. Especially for premium-cabin tickets, many higher-paying customers aren't going to choose to save money by paying for a less convenient flight. Airlines need to unload those seats, and provide good pricing to consolidators. As a result, if you use a consolidator, you’ll usually wind up needing to take a less convenient route. Nevertheless, we’ve sometimes found half-off pricing for even the best nonstop routes. So, it is always worth checking.
• Most consolidator won’t give you instant online pricing. You’ll need to call in, or fill in a form, and have them get back to you by email. One exception is Bargain Travel. They search a set of other travel sites that make consolidator tickets available. Like any other travel site, they will show online flight listings for coach or business class tickets (but not first class). Most are just regular fares that you can find elsewhere, but some are consolidator fares at a significant discount to the normal prices.
• In most cases, you’ll still earn miles for flights you buy through consolidators. In the old days, consolidator tickets often had very restrictive rules, and almost never earned miles for your flights. Nowadays, you will usually earn miles when you purchase these tickets. But, you won’t always. So, make sure to ask. The miles you’ll earn from a premium-cabin ticket can be substantial, and can make the difference in deciding which fare works best.
• You may have more restrictive cancellation policies. Make sure to ask, and to factor this into your decision making.
• Many consolidators only work via travel agents. If you do a search for consolidators, you’ll find most consolidators are setup to work via travel agents, and not directly with individual passengers. If you have a travel agent that you like, they can be a good source for finding lower-priced consolidator tickets. This is one of the areas, where travel agents still have access to better pricing than you can usually find directly on the web. They’ll add a commission, either baked into the fare and/or as a separate fee, but you still may pay less than you would be able to do on your own.
• Some other consolidators to try. We have not necessarily purchased tickets from these companies. Nor have we rigorously researched them. They are just companies we’ve found online that responded promptly, and frequently offered discounted rates.
• International Travel Systems
• Cook Travel

Purchasing last minute points

If there is award availability for business or first-class seats, you can usually “buy” tickets at a substantial discount, by simply purchasing the points you need to book an award redemption. This strategy works, even if you don’t already have any of the points you need.

• Normally, buying airline miles is a bad idea; but it can make sense for people who would otherwise have to pay cash for a business or first-class ticket. Depending on where you live, and which airline has availability, a typical business class ticket to Europe might cost 80-125,000 miles. First class tickets might cost 100-170,000 miles. Assuming you can purchase miles for about 2.5 cents each, the business class ticket will wind up costing $2,000 to $3,000; and the first-class ticket will wind up costing $2,500 to $4,250. Extra fees and surcharges vary widely, depending on the program. This isn’t cheap, but particularly for first class tickets, it may be much cheaper than any other option.


It may be obvious, but buying miles doesn’t usually make sense for economy-class travel. Typical economy award costs are 40-60,000 miles. At 2.5 cents per point, you would be paying $1,000 to $1,500, plus fees. You’ll almost always be able to find cheaper options for coach tickets. Business or first-class award tickets only require 2x – 3x the number of points as economy tickets; but the cash prices are often 5x – 20x as expensive.

• Buying the points to pay for your ticket is even more valuable on more expensive routes. For example, there is less availability for discounted premium cabin fares to Asia, than there is to Europe. As a result, the mileage buying approach is often your best option (if it is available).

For an extreme case, tickets for a first-class “suite” on Emirates (complete with the use of an in-air shower) cost $26,500 and are rarely discounted. This same suite costs 220,000 miles. Purchasing the required miles would “only” cost $5,500, plus fees.

• Premium-cabin award seats often become available very close to the departure dates. Airlines hold back their business and first-class seats, hoping for paying customers, and don’t make any of them available for award travel. Only when they still have a bunch of unsold seats close to departure, are they willing to “sell” them to people who have points, rather than having to give them away to elite frequent flyers.
• You won’t earn new miles on award tickets. Because you can typically earn a big chunk of miles when you are buying premium-cabin tickets, you need to take that into account when evaluating your options. It can be worth paying hundreds of dollars extra, just to earn the extra miles.
• Many airlines have mileage purchase programs, but they often have caps. The simplest approach to buying miles is to purchase them directly from the airlines themselves. They often have the best prices, and miles can usually be instantly acquired to use for an award.

The potential problem is that many programs cap the number of miles you can purchase in any given year. The airline’s mileage purchase program is usually targeted at people that need a smaller number of miles to “top off” their account, not for people who wants to buy the entire block of miles that are needed to redeem one of the airline’s more expensive rewards.

Depending on how far you are flying, and how many people you are flying with, some frequent flyer programs will sell you enough miles to redeem an award, and some will not.

• Purchasing Membership Reward points is a good option, when purchasing miles directly from the airline doesn’t work out. If you can’t purchase enough airline miles directly, or if the price is too expensive, you could purchase Amex Membership Reward points instead. Amex allows you to buy up to 500,000 points per year, per person, at a rate of 2.5 cents each, if you are immediately transferring them to an airline partner.


If Amex is running a transfer promotion to the frequent flyer program you want to use, your cost per mile winds up being lower. For example, if you can get a 40% bonus points on transferring to British Airways, you are purchasing miles at 1.8 cents each.

It is also possible to earn a lot of Membership Reward points by using a Membership Rewards credit card that earns bonus points on your purchases. By taking advantage of programs that let you pay almost any bill with a credit card, you can earn points by paying your mortgage, rent, loan payments, taxes, etc. The bill paying services will charge around 2.5%, but because you are earning multiple Membership Reward points per dollar, you are essentially buying them at prices that are cheaper than the normal 2.5 cents per point.

The other flexible reward currencies aren’t as useful, because they have lower limits on point purchases. Citibank’s limit is 100,000 points, which might be enough for a less expensive trip. And Chase doesn’t even sell points.

• If you expect to frequently purchase points to use for premium-cabin tickets you can stock up when they are on sale. Many airlines periodically run promotions where you can purchase miles and points at lower-than-normal prices. If you expect you’ll need the points later, it makes sense to purchase them ahead-of-time, when they are on sale.

Take advantage of different prices from different cities

Just like coach tickets, the price of premium airline tickets can vary, based on the exact pair of cities you are flying between. However, because the prices of premium-class tickets are so expensive, you can often save a lot more money by choosing to fly between alternative cities.

It isn't always the case that bigger cities get cheaper prices. Sometimes flights are cheaper from New York than Philadelphia, but sometimes tickets from Philadelphia are cheaper than New York. And pricing to a specific foreign city depend greatly on which foreign airline is choosing to price their seats aggressively.

Oneworld / British Airways discount

Members of AARP get a $200 discount on any business or first-class tickets on British Airways. This includes flights operated by American Airlines, Finnair, and Iberia, that are marketed through British Airways as well.

Contrary to popular belief, AARP membership is available to everyone, not just people who are over 50 years old. Membership is only $16/year. This is an easy way to shave some money off premium cabin tickets, on a set of popular airlines. Save Money on British Airways (and Partner) Flights with AARP (Even if You are Under 50).

Seat auctions

More than three dozen airlines now offer seat auctions. Behind the scenes, there are a few companies that power these auctions, but they don’t offer them directly to travelers. Instead, each airline provides the option directly to their customers, usually under their own brand name. Some are focused on premium-economy upgrades, others are focused on business and first-class flights.

Most of these programs work during the time between booking and flying. After you purchase your ticket, you’ll be presented with an opportunity, usually via email, to make a bid to get upgraded to a better cabin. At some point before check-in, you’ll be informed whether your bid was accepted. A few airlines are also experimenting with programs that accept bids on the day of departure.

If you check to see how many empty seats are available, you’ll have a better idea of how much leverage you have. Some common advice is to bid between 20 and 40% of the fare difference. Bid somewhat higher, if you really want the seat.

Each airline determines the exact rules that decide who wins the auction (and in some cases who can even enter it). It is not always the highest bidder that wins. Preference can be given based on your status with the airline and/or the price of the ticket your purchased.

Membership Rewards Guide

Take Advantage of Luxury Hotel Programs for Valuable Extra Perks

Send comments or suggestions to editor@travelstrategies.com or leave a comment below.

blog comments powered by Disqus