It needs to be said that first class and business seats are extremely overpriced...airlines charge close to 10k because companies buy the seats and write it off their taxes as operating expenses. An individual would have to be rich or pampered to pay 5 times the coach rate for front cabin amenities. I agree it comes down to personal taste, but if money or points are no concern then of course you will take the added comforts everytime. I can make a comparison to cruising...if you start with inside cabins, the cruise is still great. If you ever enjoy a balcony cabin, going back to inside is tough indeed.
Dont take offense FTers but you accumulate airline miles through work or promotions or even milage runs to keep your balances high enough where spending points on the minor luxuries of first class seems like the best use for them. For those of us who don't travel for business and have to hit every promo to get 100k miles per year the desicion is more difficult. Forgive the blasphamy but I have to say it....air travel is just transportation.

Just because you get the first class treatment (treated like a rich person as the term implies) free booze in a quiet lounge and more on the plane, you get to board first, and other than the lie down seats on limited routes/planes a you get a little more comfortable seat with extra (a foot?) legroom, a more attentive FA, more room to store your crap and an amenity bag with pjs and a toothbrush. these things are all distractions to the fact, that like the coach passengers who pay substantially less cash/points, you are herded like cattle into a tube to breathe recycled air for an extended amount of time. We all wind up in the same destination at the same time, you just pay a lot more to do it in a little more comfort. (and dont tell me its that big of a difference, unless you fly lear jets and private charters) I've flown in first and the big difference is the vacation for you starts when you get to the airport, for the rest of us it starts after we leave it.

The people with limited cash/points like me would rather fly free twice to hawaii in coach than once in first. Personally we have done this 4 times, even after getting bumped and upgraded on one leg once. I would like to do it up front but without megapoints I cant bring myself to empty my account for 1 flight. We have time to take 4 or 5 vacations a year and flying free makes them nicer when we get there (nicer resort, better excursions and resturants, more money for souvineers, ect.) I am tempted to take our next trip to hawaii (10hrs from ATL) in coach going since we are excited to be going and with the time change it seems early when we get there, and return in business or first costing 60k for the trip-- doing a half splurge and making the depressing flight home more bearable. Most of our other flights are less than 5 hours so coach is acceptable for the savings to us. heck I sleep through half the flights we take, why pay more to sleep a few feet forward?
It comes down to what you can afford and what you are accustomed to using points for. if we started getting used to upgrades, or take a few trips to Europe in first class we may never look back either, but until then if coach for free gets us there twice we can make due with it.

I'm happy to say, I've basically never flown Business or First. So I don't know what I'm missing. I'm sure it's good, but I deal with Economy for now.

Down the road, when my wife and I travel without the kids someday, we'll be more likely to splurge for First. Two tickets in First on miles is something I can handle; four would be pretty painful.

I do know that the first time I take my wife in First, Coach is done for. So I'm trying to wait it out.

Doesn't that prove the point you are attempting to disprove? The idea is that people consider the cash cost of C to determine the value of the miles they are spending, despite the fact that they wouldn't pay cash for C.

I think you're off by several feet there. Last flight I took the seat pitch in coach was 32" and 78" in business. But yes, at the end of the day it comes down to personal preference and what you can afford. For me I can get by in coach...but having taken most of my recent flights up front it makes me a lot less interested in returning to the back of the bus.

You are correct. The mileage expended on 1 business class trip will get you 2.5 trips to Europe. However, if you do that, you would be paying 2.5 times the cost would you not? (Lodging, food, transportation, spending money, etc.) So, by this rationale, you can take 2.5 trips to Europe on a budget for the same price as one luxurious trip. To me, this is like choosing to go to Vegas twice in one year and staying at a Motel 6 instead ponying up for a nice hotel on the strip on a single visit. Yes, you initially save money and get to go twice with the former, but what's the allure? If you can afford to swing two trips to Europe why not purchase the coach airfare outright and earn miles instead of expend them?

Your car comparison only holds salt if you can afford the Benz but choose to purchase the Honda. There is NO question that the Benz will have more features and be an overall nicer mode of transportation. On this same line, why go to a nice Tex-Mex restaurant when Taco Bell is so cheap? After all, it's just food and serves the same purpose doesn't it?

To each his own, but I don't see the added value.

I need to fly to Europe at least four times a year to visit my son. This has been going on for thirteen years now, and I've gradually gone from redeeming miles only for economy tickets to redeeming for business. As I've tasted the benefits of flying up front, I've grown to value them more. I wouldn't pay $3000 to fly business class to Europe, but if a $1700 or less offer came up, I'd definitely pay that. I enjoy flying, even in coach, but to me the front is so much more enjoyable. Since the miles have come so easily in recent years, I feel it foolish to use them for anything but business class. All my travel is on my own dime, by the way.

From a practical point of view, if I redeemed only for coach, making twice the number of trips on miles, I'd not have a chance of making the upper level of elite, the benefits of which I've come to appreciate. This year I'm using miles to fly C to Europe and C to SE Asia, but I'll still make Plat by astute use of promotions.

My limit on travel is not money or miles, but time. Because of mandatory furloughs and a 95%-time appointment, I now get over eight weeks off per fiscal year, but I used it all up within ten months this fiscal year. I do enjoy traveling.

When I first started on Flyertalk, there was a poster called Trvl4free, or something like that. He or she would use all the tricks to travel for virtually nothing. I can't come near that yet, but I hope that once I retire I can try to emulate that. Up front if I can swing it.

In re-reading Helena Handbaskets' post, you are correct that I did not interpret it correctly. So just view my earlier post as another recommendation for going C when using miles. I am one of those who think that the benefits of C are worth a reasonable premium. So if an all-cash C ticket was only 50% more than Y, I'd pay it just as willingly. To me it's not about the cpm milked out of the miles, it's about the cost difference between Y and C, which is tremendous when paying cash but very reasonable when using miles and therefore I recommend it.

Well,
nicer resort would be just a tiny room with amenity that I already had or rarely use.
I can deal with Wendy's as it's just food; which I could play TV games all day instead of burning my skin under the sun.
souvineers is just give aways, who cares how much is your key chain?

I am not saying you are wrong, but your concept contradicts what your doing.

To me, It's just different taste, different luxury, and different enjoyment.

I am traveling from Zurich to Kolkata,India on BA with AA miles. The economy tickets were 20k miles and business was 30k miles.....and for that 10000 miles extra i cannot even think about any calculations.

Individuals might give different cost to their miles based how they accumulated it, different cost to the comfort they receive on business vs. economy and hence you might be right from your point of view but might be wrong from my point of view and vice versa. Anyways, enjoy your trip wherever you are jetting.

You might think that flying "sucks," but trust me, it sucks a lot less in Business or First Class!

In all seriousness, I find flying internationally in Coach can be uncomfortable, but flying in international Business or First Class is not only pleasant, but I greatly look forward to it.

Also, some of us actually enjoy flying in any class of service. So I guess if you really do "hate" flying, then it doesn't matter where you sit!

Ah, I understand. I look at using miles for C/J/F as a chance to enjoy something I would be very unlikely to pay cash for.

I've always been surprised how much you all hate coach. I guess perhaps you don't get comfortable but I manage to stay pretty comfortable even in coach seats. For me, its on demand video that really makes the big difference.

I have recently flown intercontinental on:

NH C class 777
LX Y Class A333
NW Y class 747

I might go as far as saying that I would take 2 of those LX Y class flights vs the C on ANA and the NW 747. The LX flights were pretty comfy and had on demand video. LX Y vs NH C is basically sitting in a small slightly uncomfortable seat for several hours and watching tv while having a crappy meal and two beers versus sitting on a lazyboy and watching tv for several hours and having a couple of fantastic meals and a couple cocktails.

Either way I am just sitting in a chair and watching movies for ten hours. How much can I really pay for two good meals, two cocktails, and a comfy chair. The difference between my NW flight and LX flight however was being entertained by movies for ten hours or being bored out of my mind.

I think a lot of the posts are starting to get into a discussion of how people should value their miles, when that's actually missing the point. Like any good, marginal value to you is (or should be, at least) independent of price. I think the OP feels like a leper for considering using his miles for coach seats, when in fact it may make perfect sense for him to do that. It simply depends on the person. Using a cpm where your 'value' per mile is much higher for a J or F redemption is akin to going to a clothing store where a very expensive shirt that normally costs $200 is on sale for $100. For someone who actually values the shirt at $200, that's a great deal (they receive a consumer surplus of $100). But for someone who thinks it's ridiculous to pay more than, say, $30 for a shirt, it's still a bad deal.

Let's see if I understand what you mean. How much extra (miles or money) would you pay for a non-stop flight versus a connection which would add, say, 2 hours each way?

None. The total length of travel (from my driveway to exiting the destination airport) doesn't bother me, rather it's the time spent on the overseas flight itself that I hate. I actually enjoy airports so being in one for a bit is ok.

My last flight was LIS-LHR-ORD-MSN. The part that I disliked was the LRH-ORD segment. No amount of miles was going to get that flight from 1 airport to the next any faster. Be it in coach surrounded by screaming kids or in a vibrating layzboy being served fresh warm cookies by swimsuit models, it's still ~9 hrs in a tube. In fact, a direct LIS-MSN (were it possible) would have been longer yet and IMHO, worse than the flights I took.

I love to travel yet I hate being on planes. Kinda SOL here