Originally Posted by
injera
On a longer international flight, its not about the better meal and free/better booze but about the ability to arrive well rested.
I'm travelling next month to India (from NYC) for work. My flight lands at 8am and i'll be headed straight to the office where i'll be working the full day then expected to go to a nice dinner that evening.
It'll still be a rough day, but the difference between Y & J is the difference between getting no 'real' sleep and me getting 6 hours of decent sleep. Also the difference between me being able to conduct productive meetings and being an incoherent space cadet for the first day.
The $3500 extra for J is a lot of money, but when its the difference between a productive trip and a non productive trip its a no brainer.
Domestic flights, i'll take the free upgrade when given but (with the exception of the premium JFK-LAX services) i'm not paying more than the bare minimum (recently paid $22 to upgrade r/t JFK-CHS) for an extra few inches of legroom.
That is it for me, too. But what really got me to overcome my reluctance to pay more for business class on international flights, which I mostly fly for work, was not just the seat or that the experience could be nice, but that I had several absolutely miserable experiences in coach due to other passengers - e.g., belligerent drunk, odiferous seatmate, complaint about reclining seat on an overnight TATL flight. After the last time one of those things occurred, I thought I had to get out of international economy or I could just not take these international trips anymore. Getting there a day early would not make that any better.
I still rarely pay too much more for business class - one of the things I did was find out about FT and learn more about upgrading and looking for better deals. I have never had a bad experience in international business class, and I certainly can't say that about international economy.