Originally Posted by
Rebelyell
Just saw a thread about long business trips in coach. A neighbor of mine takes a dozen or more overseas trips each year on business. To Europe, he chooses coach. For Asia, he says he has to have business class. Needless to say, pretty much everyone in the company is flying coach to Europe, as my friend is top management and is choosing coach.
He told me his son also travels to Asia quite a bit, but that his company offers him the option of flying coach with a guaranteed empty seat next to him and pays him a $1,500 bonus if he will choose that over business. He said his son chooses the coach seat and the money.
I'm just curious if the empty seat program is a formal program or if his employer is just buying two seats. I think he flies United, and he made it sound like a special program. Certainly in three-across situations, I would hate to know that I was regularly paying to allow strangers to enjoy an empty seat!
While no company bonus, I've been doing that for years on self-funded international trips. If you get the right check-in agent you can even fund two separate FF accounts on two separate airlines.
When I flew AirAsia a ton this past summer, using their 1THB sale, I bought two seats whenever available.
As for the bonus to the other passenger - since there is no transactional cost for sharing, I think of it as a cheap way to make someones day (or at least 7-16 hours of it) a little better.
Safe Travels!
ETA: Be careful trying to buy one tix and use an award on the other - CO agents get really ticked off about that, they claim there is a rule against it, but can never provide me a copy of the rule or the book it comes from.