fsx222

Hi all,

I am planning buy an M class ticket and use miles to upgrade. However, the flights between SEA and NRT are ridiculously expensive!

My flight dates are flexible, the departing date can be sometime in the last week of August and return flight before September 23rd.

Do you have any tips to find cheaper M class tickets? Or am I too early to make decisions? Are there other places to buy a cheaper M class tickets, such as through travel agencies?

Thanks for the help in advance!!!

ReduceTC

M and cheap doesn't go together ... Why do you think the upgrades are from M ?
You basically get a discount of
1000-2000$ from the business class price , not more.

goodandclassy

Our friend sbm12 has put together an 'upgradeable fare tracking tool' for you to scope out the better fares out there
let me see if i can find relevant links. look for wandering aramean though.

also, some negotiated rates do exist and can be pretty decent - so check with your corporate agent...

goodandclassy

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewan...ta-and-united/
Blog post

http://www.wandr.me/fare-finder.aspx/
Direct link

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ble-fares.html
FT thread/announcement

irfan23

On average, I pay between 3.5 & 4k for an M fare. Sometimes one can get lucky though: In May I found an M fare to BOM via AMS for just $2400 with Z inventory on all 4 legs. But in 2 weeks I go to FRA and that M fare was 3600, which is far more typical.

mtkeller

HND via LAX is almost $1000 cheaper than NRT, from a quick SEA-TYO search on ITA with restriction DL+ /f bc=M. (Just picked two random dates in the next couple of months, but would expect fairly consistent behavior for most dates.)

MSPeconomist

If Tokyo is your destination and if you don't mind connecting rather than taking the nonstop from SEA, the HND flights are your best bet. Some like and some dislike the schedules. However, be aware that the HND flights do not give the full BE service, such as the usual dinner.

MSP-MN

If you don't mind spending some miles for a low ticket to get to YYZ, I just got YYZ-DTW-NRT-BKK for $2900 for the first weeks of October vs $4600 out of MSP. Not sure how it'd look out of YVR, if you want to try that. But for me the 25,000 miles is well worth the spend to save $1700, plus it's on the refurb 747.

DTW-HND was coming up at about $3400, direct on an A333. I think LAX-HND was similar.

Also, I was getting $2600 MSP-BOM for the same time period, but no Z available.

So, I guess be creative with your markets, and try and look for M out of markets where Delta has more competition going over the Pacific.

avidflyer

Do not expect truly "cheap" M fares...it is one of several reasons I left DL. It is just their strategy and appears to be working but they do not give "Cheap" anything for J...it is just the way it is.

$3000-$4000 is a good average for Asia from the US.

Dovster

^You get that kind of discount from I fares, which are heavily restricted. M fares give you much more flexibility (although there is no guarantee that Z fares will be available for upgrades).

Denolloyd

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

Oh how I miss sub $1500 M fares to Asia . My how times have changed.

ClipperDelta

M fares are usually much cheaper when originating outside the U.S. If one travels/commutes frequently internationally, it may be worth it to do a one way to the non-US destination, and then start purchasing M roundtrips from the non-US destination instead.

avidflyer

+1

avflyer

I also ran into this and just couldn't justify the $3300 spend when no Z was even available. I did find a creative way around it though. Flew a carrier that offered a premium economy seat in one direction (AZ on this occasion but AF does as well) and a B fare on the return. Came in around $2500 which was in line with my budget. Best of all, the B fare proved very flexible as Z wasn't opening on the original return route (SVO-JFK) so I rerouted via PRG in J. FWIW, had I flown lowest coach fare in one direction with a B on the return, the ticket would have been around $1800 (about $700 more than the lowest rt fare).

But as mentioned above, flying into the US round trip nets much more reasonable upgradeable fares. DL gets you ex-US.

fsx222

I understand. My budget is $3.5K, but round trip flights between SEA and TYO are not less than $4.2k. I am wondering if there is a way find a price closer to $3.5K.