have been following the forum for a while and have great respect for everyone's expertise...had a couple questions, though...

1)are C class tickets generally less expensive than J class on transatlantic flights? if I understand correctly, C class tickets do not get the 50% mileage bonus that J tickets get.

2)is there a way to selectively search for C class tickets?

thanks all!

hiya -

C class tickets should always be less than J (although I guess its possible through a consolidator that J could be less). Regardless, you can sometimes buy C or J directly from the US website, and in those cases C always costs less.

I dont know the history/rationale behind the 2 classes, but C is basically a discounted business class ticket.

I think that C still receives the class-of-service bonus, although have never been able to fly C or J myself. Note though that many of the bonuses posted on the Official Bonus Code Thread work for C or J.

As for your other point (searching for C tix), theres no 'automated' way but if you choose 'flexible dates' on a route, let the fares come up, then go to the bottom and choose 'View All/More Fares' then it will list ALL available fares from the website. If C is available on the route, it will show up there.

HOWEVER, sometimes C tickets are not available directly from the website - but are still being sold on the route. An easy example of this are the tickets sold by flights.com. I have seen C-class tickets there (prior to 9/11 and its subsequent Envoy sales) when none were available from the airline itself.

Seems though like several of the transatlantic routes currently have C available on the web.

Thanks hscottm for the quick reply!
this board is sooo awesome!

Additionally it often varies by airlines. C for example is full-fare business on UA and many staralliance carriers; D-class is their discount business class.