Recently, a co-worker had a short notice business trip. He hunted around the web and bought the cheapest ticket he could find. He only noticed that one of the segments was first class when he checked in at the airport.

Why would an airline offer first class for the cheapest ticket available? If the last seat on the flight is a first class seat, and the airline were willing to offer a seat on the flight at an economy price, wouldn't it be better for the airline to overbook economy (leaving the first class seat unbooked), then either offer a first class buy-up at checkin, or give the first class seat to an economy passenger using status or mileage or some such criteria?

First off, someone sounds jealous.

Secondly, it isn't necessarily true that they sold it at an economy price. It is possible that the itinerary he booked (depending on number of segments) combined several lower fare bucket coach segments in with a discounted First segment. Depending upon loads and available fare classes, the other flights might have been higher priced coach fares -- which when combined in several segments -- might have been more expensive than several discounted coach segments + a discounted First seat.

This has happened to me before. I had a couple of U fares and then a C fare on my flight to Colombia in Avianca's business class. It checked in at about 50 dollars less than a couple of (Y, B, or M... can't remember) segments with a Y to Colombia.

That's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Most likely no economy seats were available and the airline sold him a first class seat instead. Why should the airline overbook economy class if it can also charge for a first class seat?

If no economy class seat is available, a business or first class seat automatically becomes the cheapest option for lack of cheaper alternatives.

HTB.

A couple of years back I was flying from the UK into Las Vegas. After I had bought the ticket my plans changed and I was uncertain for a while whether I would need to go straight to San Francisco after landing in Las Vegas. By the time things got settled I couldn't find a cheap Las Vegas to San Francisco ticket. So swallowing hard, I was about to book the American West flight when I thought - heck if I've got to pay this much then I'll see how much first class is and maybe pay a few dollars more for the comfort. Well it turned out that first class at that particular moment in time on that particular day was $5 per ticket LESS than the only available (expensive) coach fare. Guess which I bought!

Slightly different situation, I know. But regularly used to book:

Bangkok-Saigon-Hanoi
Bangkok-Saigon-Taipei
Saigon-Hanoi-Taipei

I often found that Business was cheaper than Economy even with plenty of availability in both. Its seemed to be because Business allowed stopovers, so the fare was priced as one single but with a stopover. The Economy fares didn't allow this - so you had to book 2 separate singles which worked out more.

Presumably there should have been an unrestricted Y fare that also allowed stopover. The one time my agent found it, it was still more expensive that the C - perhaps because the C was discounted in some way.

Haven't tried it for a while, so perhaps it doesn't work anymore.

Yes, I have had several occassions where my work has asked me last minute to fly MCI - DFW and often times at least one of my segments turns up in F when I ask aa.com to show me the cheapest flight options. My company typically will not reimburse for F but I have to make notation when expensing these that the last minute info is what resulted in the F class portion.

I'm flying to China on Thursday. I'll be flying Air China for the NRT-PEK-WUH segments. Based on my companies policies, I could get the NRT-PEK segment in Business, but the PEK-WUH segment was originally purchased as coach. I called the AmEx travel folks and when they looked, the ticket was $7 cheaper if the PEK-WUH segment was purchased as 1st class. So now I get Bus/1st for the whole itinerary.

My assumption was that there may have been some discounted 1st seats available and the only Y seats were full price (or something similar.) But I didn't want to pry to closely.

It was actually a simple round trip, and the itinerary with the first class segment was cheaper than other all-economy itineraries on the same and other airlines. Since he was only looking for the cheapest ticket, not specifically for first class (which he did not even realize until checkin time), the airline could have offered the same fare as an economy ticket and still made the sale.

Again, it sounds like jealousy, and as we told you, that's not the way it works.