What university is your son attending? I did a year at Cambridge several years ago.

In terms of the flight, it is going to be really hard to get into business class on a student ticket, but there are several things that can be done to make the trip easier:

-Fly British Airways and sign up for the Executive Club. 24 hours before your flight, do on-line check in. You can use this feature to select your specific seat from a map of the plane. I have almost always been able to get bulkhead seats on transatlantic flights (with 5-7 more inches of legroom). The key is to do the on-line check in as close to the 24 h window as possible as the seats get taken fast.

-Dress up on the day of travel. Numerous posts on this site describe operational upgrades, etc... In order to get the upgrade you have to look like you belong in business. Op-ups are unlikely if you are travelling on a student ticket or don't have status on the airline.

-If you are flying American or United, use seatguru.com to find a good coach seat. Call the reservations number and go down the list of seats you would like (it helps to be in front of the web page while doing this). American usually doesn't release the bulkhead seats, but there are other good seats as you will see from seatguru.com.

-Flirting with the check-in agent has gotten me upgraded on more than one occasion .