Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 08:07     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Most people and certainly most families of 6 are not flying business class to Europe. I grew up in a family of 6, high income, and we rarely traveled internationally, let alone in business class!
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 07:59     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Unless you have gobs of money to spend, I wouldn't bother with business class to Rome. Instead, I'd buy economy seats and hope for a cheap upgrade to Premium Economy Plus after purchase. We were able to upgrade to PEP on United to Tokyo for $300pp, and it was definitely worth it.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 07:12     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
OP - purchase business class for you and your spouse and put the kids in economy. They're old enough to be back there by themselves. If you want them closer to the front, book Premium Economy on the direct from United. It's a good in-between biz class and economy, and they'll be right behind the Polaris cabin.

If you don't have high status on an airline it's hard to get upgrades, especially on international flights. And especially IAD to FCO in the summer. We fly this route a lot and are 1K on United, and we rarely get upgraded on this route in high season.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:55     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The issue is there's 6 of you. There's unlikely to be award space (tickets for miles) or upgrades for that many seats. Airlines set aside only a few seats (often 1-2) per flight as award seats at the outset. Then, if a flight is sort of empty as the date approaches, they'll open up more. But.. Italy in summer is not going to fall into this category. Italy in October or February might.

You're going to Rome? There's 3 non-stops, 2 on United, one on ITA Airways. I picked some random dates in July and it varies from $4,500-6,500 on the direct flight.

If you don't mind connecting, IcelandAir is in the $2,800 range but they dont' offer true business class, just recliner seats. TAP is about $3,300 and they have proper business class seats.

What we do is we plan very far in advance for our summer trips to Europe, like 10-11 months ahead. We booked in November for our August trip to Europe, and I was watching flights daily and worked out the best dates and costs, so we're going for $2,500/person in business class, on a good airline with proper business class seats.


Whoa $2500 is a great price for biz class to Europe in summer. What airline/destination? Are you flying middle of the week? I tend to see those prices generally a bit lower. If you want to maximize weekends, say leave Friday night and return on a Sunday 2 weeks later, it tends to be a bit more expensive than if you go say Wednesday to Tuesday.


Flying SAS. I narrowed it down to 2 airlines that were best schedule-wise, then signed up for their own sales emails and got one from SAS about a sale. Then I used their site with the "I'm flexible" option to find a set of dates in August where we'd be there for about 2 weeks. Compromised and we'll be back 2 days earlier than planned, but that saved us $400/ticket so it really adds up when the whole family is traveling.


Nice find. I like their 10PM departure. Not a fan of those 6 or 7 PM departures, takes so long to be tired enough to fall asleep that you end up with 2-3 hours tops. Looks like they have a nice biz class product.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:19     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:You buy it. We have like 140k in miles and basically they only make miles seats available when all the other seats are sold so business class is the least likely. We tried and ended up just buying business class outright


United is currently 374k miles round-trip in business to Rome in July.


Yeah that's why if you use miles you need a lot, usually from a bunch of signup bonuses, and spend a good amount of time searching, looking at options, etc. And it's much harder to get the lower mileage cost awards for more than 2 people, as stated above. It's not easy or simple.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:19     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The issue is there's 6 of you. There's unlikely to be award space (tickets for miles) or upgrades for that many seats. Airlines set aside only a few seats (often 1-2) per flight as award seats at the outset. Then, if a flight is sort of empty as the date approaches, they'll open up more. But.. Italy in summer is not going to fall into this category. Italy in October or February might.

You're going to Rome? There's 3 non-stops, 2 on United, one on ITA Airways. I picked some random dates in July and it varies from $4,500-6,500 on the direct flight.

If you don't mind connecting, IcelandAir is in the $2,800 range but they dont' offer true business class, just recliner seats. TAP is about $3,300 and they have proper business class seats.

What we do is we plan very far in advance for our summer trips to Europe, like 10-11 months ahead. We booked in November for our August trip to Europe, and I was watching flights daily and worked out the best dates and costs, so we're going for $2,500/person in business class, on a good airline with proper business class seats.


Whoa $2500 is a great price for biz class to Europe in summer. What airline/destination? Are you flying middle of the week? I tend to see those prices generally a bit lower. If you want to maximize weekends, say leave Friday night and return on a Sunday 2 weeks later, it tends to be a bit more expensive than if you go say Wednesday to Tuesday.


Flying SAS. I narrowed it down to 2 airlines that were best schedule-wise, then signed up for their own sales emails and got one from SAS about a sale. Then I used their site with the "I'm flexible" option to find a set of dates in August where we'd be there for about 2 weeks. Compromised and we'll be back 2 days earlier than planned, but that saved us $400/ticket so it really adds up when the whole family is traveling.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:18     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Use airmiles to fly to and from Toronto, Montreal or Quebec City and then take your flight from there.


Bad advice for two reasons:

1. Quebec city has no direct flights from DC, and no direct flights to Rome, so going from DC to Rome via Quebec city would involve 4 flights each way.

2. Canada has 1/10th the US population, so much less competition for air travel. This means flights originating from Canada to Europe are usually more expensive than flights originating from the US to Europe. Where there is a good deal is a single itinerary flight to Europe via Canada. Air Canada in particular cannot always fill their big planes to Asia (and to a lesser extent, Europe) with just the Canadian market so they lower prices for US customers flying via Toronto or Montreal. For example, DC to Tokyo in September in Business on Air Canada is $6,100 from DC via Toronto, and $6,300 if you just fly direct from Toronto, even though both itineraries are on the very same flight between Toronto and Tokyo.


A lot of people just hear about so-called "hacks" like this that might be a better deal 5% of the time. Rarely are they repeataable.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:15     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:Use airmiles to fly to and from Toronto, Montreal or Quebec City and then take your flight from there.


Bad advice for two reasons:

1. Quebec city has no direct flights from DC, and no direct flights to Rome, so going from DC to Rome via Quebec city would involve 4 flights each way.

2. Canada has 1/10th the US population, so much less competition for air travel. This means flights originating from Canada to Europe are usually more expensive than flights originating from the US to Europe. Where there is a good deal is a single itinerary flight to Europe via Canada. Air Canada in particular cannot always fill their big planes to Asia (and to a lesser extent, Europe) with just the Canadian market so they lower prices for US customers flying via Toronto or Montreal. For example, DC to Tokyo in September in Business on Air Canada is $6,100 from DC via Toronto, and $6,300 if you just fly direct from Toronto, even though both itineraries are on the very same flight between Toronto and Tokyo.
Anonymous
Post 12/23/2024 01:08     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:You buy it. We have like 140k in miles and basically they only make miles seats available when all the other seats are sold so business class is the least likely. We tried and ended up just buying business class outright


United is currently 374k miles round-trip in business to Rome in July.
Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 23:52     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
You buy it. We have like 140k in miles and basically they only make miles seats available when all the other seats are sold so business class is the least likely. We tried and ended up just buying business class outright
Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 23:18     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Use airmiles to fly to and from Toronto, Montreal or Quebec City and then take your flight from there.
Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 23:15     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
Anonymous wrote:The issue is there's 6 of you. There's unlikely to be award space (tickets for miles) or upgrades for that many seats. Airlines set aside only a few seats (often 1-2) per flight as award seats at the outset. Then, if a flight is sort of empty as the date approaches, they'll open up more. But.. Italy in summer is not going to fall into this category. Italy in October or February might.

You're going to Rome? There's 3 non-stops, 2 on United, one on ITA Airways. I picked some random dates in July and it varies from $4,500-6,500 on the direct flight.

If you don't mind connecting, IcelandAir is in the $2,800 range but they dont' offer true business class, just recliner seats. TAP is about $3,300 and they have proper business class seats.

What we do is we plan very far in advance for our summer trips to Europe, like 10-11 months ahead. We booked in November for our August trip to Europe, and I was watching flights daily and worked out the best dates and costs, so we're going for $2,500/person in business class, on a good airline with proper business class seats.


Whoa $2500 is a great price for biz class to Europe in summer. What airline/destination? Are you flying middle of the week? I tend to see those prices generally a bit lower. If you want to maximize weekends, say leave Friday night and return on a Sunday 2 weeks later, it tends to be a bit more expensive than if you go say Wednesday to Tuesday.
Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 23:08     Subject: Re:Business class to Rome this summer
The issue is there's 6 of you. There's unlikely to be award space (tickets for miles) or upgrades for that many seats. Airlines set aside only a few seats (often 1-2) per flight as award seats at the outset. Then, if a flight is sort of empty as the date approaches, they'll open up more. But.. Italy in summer is not going to fall into this category. Italy in October or February might.

You're going to Rome? There's 3 non-stops, 2 on United, one on ITA Airways. I picked some random dates in July and it varies from $4,500-6,500 on the direct flight.

If you don't mind connecting, IcelandAir is in the $2,800 range but they dont' offer true business class, just recliner seats. TAP is about $3,300 and they have proper business class seats.

What we do is we plan very far in advance for our summer trips to Europe, like 10-11 months ahead. We booked in November for our August trip to Europe, and I was watching flights daily and worked out the best dates and costs, so we're going for $2,500/person in business class, on a good airline with proper business class seats.
Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 22:23     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
Buying economy tickets and upgrading using moleson overseas flights isn't a real possibility, unless you are very high level status- the type of person who flies 100k miles a year.

Most people are probably either:

1. High level elites who have a lot of miles or do the upgrade
2. Rich people
3. Slightly less rich people who buy economy and take a cash upgrade offer- usually cheaper than just buying the business class direct, but not always available.
4. People who use miles from credit cards and bonuses, and spend a good amount of time scoping out reasonably priced award tickets.

Anonymous
Post 12/22/2024 22:05     Subject: Business class to Rome this summer
I’m considering business class to Rome this summer for my family of 6 (2 adults, 4 middle and high school age kids). We’ve flown plenty of times before but not usually so far. I’ve looked at the cost of business class and objectively it seems insane but we’ve accumulated a sizable net worth so it is subjectively less insane.

The question therefore becomes, how do people usually manage this? Just pay for the tickets outright. Buy economy tickets and upgrade? Direct flights or a layover?

Please educate me.