The Perrin Report: How to Snag A Bargain Seat in Business Class

How to snag a bargain seat in business class

It might surprise you to learn how affordable international business-class airfares can be. Sometimes they're priced just a few hundred dollars more than economy. They might even cost less than buying a coach seat and upgrading to business using frequent-flier miles, since such upgrades now often require a fee of hundreds of dollars. In fact, two business-class fares can cost less than one plus a free companion ticket. In March, for instance, when a fellow Condé Nast Traveler editor needed two business-class seats from Newark to Rome in late August, she looked into the two-for-one business-class fares available through her American Express Platinum Card. The price for two tickets was $7,880. Then she looked into buying a pair of coach tickets and using miles to upgrade to business class. That would have cost $2,460 per person (thanks to pricey upgrade co-pays) in addition to 40,000 miles per person. She ended up buying two BusinessFirst tickets from Continental for $2,198 each. It was a bargain but hardly one of Continental's cheapest BusinessFirst fares to Europe—the airline was offering tickets to Birmingham, England, for just $1,498 round-trip.

Follow these strategies to find affordable business-class fares:

Look for sales on flights during the peak summer tourist season as well as during the Christmas/New Year's window. Business travel typically stops during these periods, meaning there are more available seats. Airline Web sites may publish the winter holiday sales as early as June and the summer sales in February. Pounce on them the moment they're announced.

Fly into world business capitals. Cities frequented by business travelers have the most inbound business-class seats. For instance, you'll find more such seats on flights to Milan than to Rome, and fewer to Barcelona, Athens, and Istanbul.

Unless you're using a consolidator, book at least two months in advance. You're most likely to find a steep discount if you purchase your ticket several months before departure and stay over a Saturday night.

Be willing to connect. Asia bound? You can save a lot of money, both in business class and coach, by flying via Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, or Tokyo. When business travel expert Joe Brancatelli of JoeSentMe.com flies from New York to Hawaii, he pays $1,500 for first class on Alaska Airlines with a connection in Seattle instead of $2,600 for a nonstop business-class ticket to Honolulu on Continental.

Consider combining two tickets—the first to a gateway, the second from the gateway to your final destination. Rather than purchasing a connecting itinerary from one airline, Brancatelli suggests, purchase two separate tickets from two separate carriers. Last month, for instance, you might have paid $5,660 to fly from Miami to Paris in business class on American Airlines. Or you could have paid $955 for a first-class ticket from Miami to Newark on United, then $1,868 for a Newark-Paris (Orly) flight on Open Skies in BizSeat—the equivalent of first class on many competitors—and saved yourself $2,837. When you combine two tickets, it's crucial to build extra time into your layover: First, you'll need to pick up your luggage from Airline No. 1 at the connection point and check it in to Airline No. 2. Second, if your first flight is delayed, Airline No. 1 will not be responsible for getting you to your final destination, as it would be were you to buy the complete itinerary through it.