Ingvar Kamprad, the billionaire founder of Ikea, flies economy and so do the rest of his employees. Just like the cisco example, it seems hard to justify the perk of J if even the CEO is flying Y. Would certainly take the difference in price if offered since it would be more than my monthly salary My company pays for C for flights over 6 hours btw but not for "foreign" employees coming from India or Brazil for example. Strange double standard or are indians and brazilians used to less pampering than their "western" counterparts?

I don't think anyone here is "demanding" it. My company offers it, and it's one of the things that keeps me there instead of going somewhere else. The grass is greener here.

That said, my flying in J or F is not dependent upon the company offering it. I fly so much I earn the status pretty rapidly, and UG's are frequent. If I am facing a TPAC for 14hrs and there is no auto UG, I can use the miles I have to buy up to F. And it makes a huge differance as to the quality of the work that gets done.

Showing up in Asia with a thrombo in your leg and baby barf on your shoe is less likely to close that deal or get that account than walking off that plane rested and calm is.

Having done the 250k+/year long haul intl thing, there is no way I could do it in Y and be able to function at a high level, and I would be worried about the effect on my health.

Out of curiosity, have you done this amount of travel in the past? and in what class?

At 300k per year you are literally spending weeks of time on planes and in airports. Difficult to justify the cost of J over Y if you are flying once a year but with such a heavy travel schedule it is practically a necessity if you want to keep at it for any amount of time.

I have been doing 200-300k a year for the last 6 years. The first 5 of that we flew Y because thats what our VP flew. Now I am with a new company and in the position to set the standard for our division.

Thanks to Flyertalk and ExpertFlyer, I don't have to actually fly too often in the back.

This year for my division is a big growth year and I want to be somewhat frugal with my travel budget since every dollar not spent, goes to the bottom line. I hope to not have this dilema next year!

It's interesting to hear how so many people cannot fly in coach. Before I flew in business class, coach was the norm. That was how I flew. But ever since I flew business (and a lot of it), business has now become the norm.

It is very much a first world problem since so many people who want to fly 10-14 hours just naturally fly coach; there is no other option. We've become very "spoiled".

Whenever I have to fly internationally, now, I frantically search for how I can get into business class (if flying on my own dime), with either a super-cheap fare or with an upgrade. I spend hours and hours and hours (way more than the flight itself) researching things so I can spend those 10 hours in business class. It's pretty crazy how much time I spend on this subject...

Total 1st world problems!

That's true. Much of the world will happily take an 18 hour dangerous bus ride with a guy carrying his live chickens sitting in the next seat. Where we want to be pampered with Champagne, excellent IFE and if the chicken is under-cooked we throw a fit.

But business is business. Productivity and execution trumps all.

My own experience:

I currently fly YYC-FRA-TXL approximately once every six weeks. At the end of the flight there is a three-hour drive to a point between TXL and POZ. The usual layover in FRA is four hours.

Could I do it in Y? Well, it may be possible.

Would I do it? Not if I could help it.

At a bare minimum, I would insist on a day to acclimatize, so the client is paying for an extra day of my time, plus a hotel room in TXL. The difference between discount J and discount Y is considerably narrowed once this is taken into account.

Plus, as mentioned, it is a perk, and softens the blow of fourteen straight twelve-hour days.

Now, my time and expenses are billed directly to the client, so J is not a cost centre to my employer. It is standard in our contracts, though, that flights outside NA are in J, and none of our overseas clients have objected to this.

And don't even get me started on YYC-FRA-DXB-MCT; trying to mandate Y in a case like that would quickly lead to "Find someone else" from most of my colleagues.

YMMV.

Best regards,

TB-ES

There's also the difference between frequent planned travel, and occasional (forced) travel. I work for a higher ed institute, and the people who travel all the time (admissions, donor relations) go coach almost exclusively to save on their budgets. But when faculty or senior staff who don't normally travel are asked to make an international trip, biz class is one of the reasons they're willing to do it.

For me a major consideration of whether I'll travel in Y is being 6'4". If I am booking months in advance for vacation, I can most likely secure exit row seats, in addition to having time to recover after I land.

If I'm booking a few weeks before travel for business, exit row is very unlikely and will need to be able to hit the ground running to get my work done. Granted, travel is somewhat "optional" for my job, but if they didn't offer to fly me in J, which luckily they do, I definitely wouldn't opt to travel.

Good for you. I'm not like that, and many other people are not like that as well. I've done the 16-hour flights in Y for personal trips and I'm a mess afterwards. However it's a personal trip so I can take my time to recover. For a business trip I don't usually have that luxury. My employer recognises that.

We also charge our travel expenses back to clients so it's not really an expense for us.

Right, but many people are like that. If one prospective employee says "I won't be productive unless my company buys me $10,000 plane tickets," and the other is grateful to have a job and travel in Y, which should the company hire? As I said before, everyone is replaceable, and any company that buys their employees anything other than Y is flushing money down the toilet.

So true. No matter how egotistical and self-important the employee or boss thinks he/she is, they are replaceable. From Nobel Laureates to NBA basketball stars to CEOs, we're all replaceable.

if you can't afford to fly your employees in J, at least make the ground time more productive by buying them lounge passes, premier line perks, etc. AA has that Five Star service thing which isn't all that expensive relative to the fare difference of J, yet it still delivers a lot of the J amenities at the airport...

I can deal with a 12 hour flight in Y, but if you start throwing in long lines and no lounge to pass the ground time, then Y just proceeds to suck more.

depends on what the CEO is doing. If all he's doing is meeting an established client to go play golf, then there's no need for him to sit in J/F. If his worker is on the way to somewhere to try to land a major sale, then his worker should probably be resting in J while he's sitting in Y. There's lots of cases where a boss will go with his workers to a meeting and the workers will sit in J and the boss will sit in Y because the boss isn't actually doing much other than just shaking a few hands...

Well, all I can say is that I'm glad you don't write the travel policies for my company.

Let's take a further look at my upcoming trip (times are MST (GMT-7) / CEST (GMT+1))

06:00 / 14:00 Wakeup
08:00 / 16:00 Arrive at office to bill six hours before leaving for airport
15:00 / 23:00 Leave for YYC
15:30 / 23:30 Arrive at YYC
17:40 / 01:40 +1 day Flight for FRA leaves
03:15 +1 day / 11:15 +1 day Flight arrives in FRA
07:35 +1 day / 15:35 +1 day Flight leaves for TXL
08:45 +1 day / 16:45 +1 day Flight arrives in TXL
09:30 +1 day / 17:30 +1 day Baggage claimed & rental car picked up
12:30 +1 day / 20:30 +1 day Arrive at hotel

Now, if you want to spend three hours driving on the autobahn after 27 hours without sleep, you're more than welcome to do so. Please PM me, though, so that I can make sure I'm nowhere near the area when you're making the attempt.

I, on the other hand, think it's dangerous. And, as much as I like my employer, risking my life on the autobahn so that they can save our client a couple of thousand dollars in travel costs ... well, I don't like them that much. And if they can find someone to replace me who's willing to take that risk, so be it.

But, maybe I'm just a fragile flower.

TB-ES

Wow, so now flying in economy class is literally a danger to life and limb. The drama is escalating!

My point still stands: if you're incapable of functioning or doing your job after a long flight in Y, you should fly out a day earlier to allow rest. If you don't want to do that, you should find a job that doesn't require travel. There will be hundreds of people in line to replace you.

I realize many companies don't agree with this ethos, but I think this will be the new way of doing business sooner rather than later, when they realize the money that can be saved. You don't see Cisco struggling to attract talent.