A peek at the JoeSentMe.com landing page.

by Julia Bainbridge on Travel Deals

If you want to take advantage of the phenomenal business-class airfare sales this summer, today's column by business travel expert Joe Brancatelli of Joe Sent Me is a must-read. In "Have I Got Some Sale Fares for You," Joe scrutinizes the various deals on offer, airline by airline, with prices and restrictions all mapped out.

"These sales make sense for us," Joe writes to his audience of road warriors. "Airlines slash--and by slash, I'm talking upwards of 80 percent--their business-class fares at the exact moment we want to take a holiday in style and comfort. And despite the drastically lower price, we almost always get the standard on-the-ground business-class perks: lounge access, bonus miles and lots of credit toward elite status. Summer business-class sales also work for airlines: They fill empty business-class seats with paying passengers on holiday who would otherwise be sitting in coach. That, in turn, frees up additional coach seats that they can sell at their inflated summer economy-class prices."

As Joe points out, however, some deals are much better than others: "Given the fact that business-class travel generally has tumbled about 20 percent since last year, some of the sale prices aren't quite as sharp as they could be. And the nascent Asia summer sales are, in some cases, wildly overpriced and borderline insulting in this economy."

Lucky for us, Joe separates the real deals from the raw deals. Among the better transatlantic offers:

* American Airlines: one-way from JFK to Zurich for $899; $999 from JFK to Paris or Rome; $1,099 from Boston to Frankfurt; and $1,399 from Los Angeles to Madrid.
* Open Skies: Two beds for the price of one from New York to Paris or Amsterdam. Which means two lie-flat seats between JFK and Amsterdam cost only $3,400 roundtrip.

And among the transpacific sales:

* Air New Zealand for as little as $5,380 roundtrip from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington or Queenstown.
* United Airlines to Sydney and Melbourne for $2,457 one-way from Los Angeles or San Francisco; $2,367 from Seattle; $2,444 from Chicago; and $2,457 from New York.

You need to be a member of JoeSentMe.com to read the full article. Wendy says the $49 annual membership fee is a bargain, considering the thousands of dollars you can save by booking just a single seat on one of these flights, not to mention all the "Steals and Deals" that Joe thoroughly vets each week. Wendy reads them religiously. Now I do, too.