Hello!
I started reading some trip reports here and they are all very nice, but I actually do wonder about the high amount of people obviously flying F and C often where they get that money from to pay such tickets. Roundtrip F Europe-USA can cost 9000-10000 USD and even in Norwegian salaries that is a huge amount. Or do you just do it for business flights or have some insane much miles to spend? Just wondering really...
Regards an all time Y.

Well if in fact you were rich enough to purchase F, I would doubt you would spend much time on FT. Some people do purchase F, but that would be the minority around here. If you checkout this post in the AC form you'll see how many F flights people manage to squeeze in with their miles. If you do a search this has been discussed many times.

for me, of my 9 one way trips in F/C, two were over a holiday and I had to travel on specific dates, and it was either pay 50K miles for a UA Standard award in coach or pay 45K miles for a UA Saver award in First, so First was cheaper.
The next was a mileage upgrade on AA, and I only did it b/c I had a rather long routing all over the country that ended up taking me to the caribbean, and the miles were about to expire, so I put them to some use.
The fourth and fifth time was a roundtrip to China, and my choices were 130K UA standard award in coach, 125K saver award in business, or 145K saver award in First. Figured for about a 10% premium over coach, it was worth trying out International First. It was pretty good!
The 6th time was a short trip within China in business class (ticket only costed about $30 more than coach).
The 7th time was an operational upgrade that came out of the blue on AA.
The 8th time was cashing in some e500s on AA, but somehow the agent messed up and didn't actually take my coupons and I ended up getting it for free.
The 9th time was a mileage upgrade on an AA transcon that was 7 hours long.


so yeah, i've done it all, mileage upgrade, mileage redemption, cash, complimentary, coupon based. There's tons of ways to sit up front, the easiest way is via your miles. Since miles to sit up front usually is 1.5-2x more than coach, my philosophy is one quality trip overseas over two miserable trips overseas. Less is More, Quality over Quantity.
Though, I'd say most TATL trips are kinda short, only about 6-7 hours, I'd save the miles for a TPAC trip, Anything >10 hours can be tough in coach

Education. It does indeed pay.

Regarding your observation about the "trip report" forum: many FTers fly Y, but don�t bother to post a trip report, most will only spend the time to write up a report for a "special" trip in C/F.

To answer your question, >99% of FTers don�t pay for int�l F.

Most FTers who fly C/F internationally fall into the following categories:

1) their employee pays for C (and sometimes F, if you�re very lucky)
2) they buy a (discounted) C ticket for leisure (can be <$2k for a TATL flight when airlines are running a promo, especially during the holiday season when business travel is low)
3) they pay for Y and upgrade to C using miles or upgrade instruments (SWUs, EVIPs...)
4) they redeem miles for an award ticket in C/F

I�ll be flying about 100k BIS miles in int�l C/F for leisure this year and haven�t bought anything more expensive than a Y ticket. And as I don�t live in the US, I can�t even generate as many miles as most FTers can.

The majority of F pax are upgraded. Flyertalk contains all the knowledge needed to do so.^

Many FTers pay their dues in Y for years before possessing the cache of miles they use on mile-maximizing trips in F/C. At the same time we've also paid out of pocket for F/C.

No secret really - either buy F/C with $ or miles or try to upgrade with miles. Gone are the days where some articles have written if you wear a suit and you 'look' like you belong in F, the GA will put you there.

Generally, most of us travel so much for work that we accumulate the miles necessary to upgrade ourselves. But in addition to that, different airlines offer loyalty programs that get you automatic upgrades if available when the flight leaves. Most of the time I fly F, it's because I am a member of their program with a qualifying status (they are usually tiered) and they have a seat open.

Although there is less of it around these days, some companies still fly their execs in C or F.

Some are wealthy enough to afford it outright, but even most of them will be reluctant to pay full fare.

I give you a free workshop in Oslo:-) Please PM.

Almost 250K ButtInSeat miles YearToDate. Luckily majority on intnl F.

I started a similar thread a short while ago:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...-own-dime.html

Seems that no one mentioned another big option - spending lots of money on a credit card that can yield miles.

I pay a decent amount of my business expenses with credit cards. I monitor the current offers to see where I should concentrate my spend. For example, my wife and I each got the BA Visa last year when the 100,000 free mile offer was extended. Spent some money on the card and was able to take advantage of their 2-4-1 redemption after a $30,000 annual spend. Result? Two First Class tickets to Tel Aviv in May.

Last summer we transferred Starwood points that came from our Starwood AMEX spend during a period when there was a 50% bonus on point transfers. Ended up with two FC tickets to Europe on Swiss (magnificent!).

As long as the airlines find profit in the selling of points to credit card companies, these deals will be out there. But it will be pretty depressing when I retire and the flow of points slows to a trickle!

Those prices look more like roundtrip J to me, F is usually much higher (I just priced LAX-LHR for June 2011 and full-fare first is $16,000-$22,000, full-fare business is $14,000-$16,000).

However, discount fares are available for both business (starting at $4,000) and first (starting at $12,000), and often there are much lower fares for promotions, holidays, etc.

When traveling for work, many companies have contracts which give them significant discounts on published fares.

Especially among FTers, many people use miles or upgrade certificates to fly in the next cabin up from what they purchase.

There are also special round-the-world fares available which offer substantial savings.