Living There
Almost all of us like to travel and often to get to most gorgeous places on our planet we need to use air travel. The majority of passengers use the most affordable flight class so called economy class (aka couch class), it’s no doubt a great way to travel on short distances because it’s quite cheap and your legs don’t have time to become numb.
But if we are talking about intercontinental non-stop flights which can take for up to 22 hours, those can be a complete disaster for your back if you travel in economy class especially if you have some medical condition. So if maximum comfort is important to you, almost all airlines offer business and first class seats but you probably already heard that these seats are not cheap and most likely they will cost you thousands of dollars if you book via regular sources like airline websites. So for travelers who would like to save some of their hard earned cash we prepared this short guide which will describe how to easily obtain cheap business class tickets .
- Try to get an elite member status from major airline.
This is probably the hardest way but the most effective one, because when you’ll get there you will be able to use free upgrades from your economy seats to business and first class. To get this status you need to fly certain amount of miles, for example on American Airlines to qualify for the first elite status level which is called Gold status you need to fly 25,000 miles or
30 segments within a calendar year. Other statuses Platinum and Executive Platinum require 50,000 miles or 60 segments and 100,000 miles and 100 segments respectively. But after you’ll gain one of these statuses, consider yourself very lucky, you will be able to upgrade your economy seat to business or sometimes even first class without any hustle.
- Sign up for a credit card, which allows to collect airline miles for your everyday purchases.
This is most reliable and quickest way to get to your highly desired upgrade. Just sign up for a credit card with your favorite bank, Credit Card Company or airline. And start to collect reward points, which can be spent, on flight upgrades. Normally it’s 1 to 1 conversion so for one dollar spent you get one reward point. Another thing worth to consider here is that a lot of credit card offers offer a huge sign up bonus it can be for up to 100.000 miles or reward points so you should always be on a hunt for that kind of offers.
- Volunteer to give up your seat any moment.
Often airlines try their best to sell more seats than there are actually available on the plane, this phenomenon is called ‘overbooking’. If that unpleasant thing happens, airline staff tries to find volunteers who will be ready to give up their seats and take a later flight. At this time you will need to use all your negotiation skills to get yourself in business or first class seat and in 99% of time this strategy works well and airline will grant you business class seat instead of economy but on a later flight.
