What? Any flight over 5 hours you should consider business class for health reasons |
| Later flight- you’ll fall asleep more easily and get there in the morning - perfect! |
99% of people can't/aren't going to pay several thousands of dollars more for 5 hours of comfort. |
| I love the 10:40 Air France flight. Great for sleeping and getting in at a good time. |
AF economy is excellent. |
Well biz class seats overseas average about $5,000…sure that’s attainable for the average family! So DCUM. I have dabbled in the miles game. For overseas flights, you’re talking over a million miles for a family to sit in biz class. |
100% |
The elites on DCUM will pay this. They all also have second homes in Aspen and Tuscany. I fly economy and hoard Hilton points for free nights at a Hampton Inn. |
Yes that's the case if you go business both ways, and aren't able to find "saver" awards, which are admittedly hard to get in overseas business class. But we flew business to Europe and economy back (daytime flight so less need for the lie flat bed, etc) for 480k miles for a family of 4 (90k outbound in business, 30k return in economy). |
I’m sure a lay flat seat is great, but for most Europe flights- UK, Germany, France, it’s not really that long of a flight. Economy isn’t fun, but unless you’re swimming in money or miles, I don’t see it being worthwhile. |
Germany is an 8 hour flight-- we were happy to have premium economy but would have been happier in business
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It isn't long but it's at night ahead of very valuable time. But the length of the flights is why I always go straight to sleep once on board. 10,000 bell and I'm down. |
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Later flight unless you are willing to pay for a hotel room for the night before you get in. I have done this before, in order to enable checking into a hotel room at 5am (only some hotels will let you do this, but airport hotels are the most likely to allow it so I will often just do that).
I am crap at sleeping on planes no matter my class status or the time of flight, so this works better for me because I will just not sleep on the flight at all, maybe listen to a podcast and doze but not actually sleep, but then check into the room in the early morning and get 4-5 hours of real sleep, wake in time for lunch, and have no jet lag. If I'm on vacation, this is ideal because it's usually my preference to stay out late, especially in a European city, and then sleep in a bit in the morning. So I'll basically be on schedule at that point without a jet lag day. This also works best for work travel for me, especially if I have meetings that day, assuming they are in the afternoon. But it's not always possible depending on where I'm going, and obviously only works when traveling east with a short enough flight that I can actually get a decent amount of sleep in the morning at the hotel. With the later flight, I will still not really sleep on the plane, be fairly worthless until I can check into my hotel, and then pretty much have to nap at the hotel prior to dinner unless I want to be catatonic at dinner that night. Then go to bed late after dinner, sleep in a bit the next day, and at that point be on schedule. But I lose a day to jet lag this way and am usually VERY grumpy that first day. |
480k points plus close to a thousand dollars per ticket in taxes and fees. That is how it works on most airlines. So you still paid more for the seat than an economy ticket. And you probably flew in February. |
"close to a thousand dollars per ticket in taxes and fees." I'm a different poster but you are way overstating this. Taxes and fees on an award biz class ticket RT to Paris, at least on United, will be around $250. |