findark

It's a fair point, but I am personally surprised by the (common) opinion that a few extra hours in flight makes the lie-flat that much more important. Lie-flats are nicer for lounging than recliners, but where I care is if I'm sleeping. If for whatever reason you can't get a solid 6 hours (eat in the lounge) on an east coast TATL, are you really getting your money's worth from lie-flat on e.g. DEN-LHR either? Certainly I would rather have J on EWR-LHR and PE on LHR-SFO than vice-versa.

But of course, YMMV

WineCountryUA

the difference is less for lounging vs sleeping.
Such as the older sCO lie-flats were poor loungers.
sure but the OP proposed J in one direction and standard (10 across?) in the other -- with that RT PP starts to sound better.

As far as DEN-LHR, you are over 9 hours and that is starting be a different type of calculus. As would SFO-LHR

HenrySu1220

the amex plantinum card international travel or something else (forget the name of that stuff) program seems provide slightly cheaper price like 100-300 usd off on top of the market price, you can have a try but need a service fee.
Otherwise, I used to just sign up an alert for the routes i am looking for on skyscanner, I did follow a route for about 6 months and I personally did not really find business class had significant changes of the price over the period of time. But for specific airline if you want to follow, then it might have periodic promotions, otherwise, it did not make a great difference booking 6 months in advance or 2 months, still lowest prices showed up 3-4 months before. But the price got higher at the end.

There are sometimes pretty crazy bug price like 600 usd cathy pacific from vietnam to the US, but it has to be a specific route at certain period of time which was quite hard to meet. There are also time the turkish lira to usd exchange rate significantly dropped and I purchased a ticket in Lira instead of usd on TK business class on top of the promotional fare, leading to additional 500usd cheaper price. But I really did not have a good answer, I would rather just stick to award business ticket which I am currently thinking the best way to book business class as the price was quite stable, flexible and cheap, but you just do not earn elite status and miles.

snackdog

If you can fly over the holidays, business travel drops off dramatically and the price is very close to full fare coach. Last Christmas I bought Y for 20% more than coach.

SQTraveller

Agreed. While not 100% accurate. I find the interface very simple to use and can give a wide range of options for arrival airports so you can see the various prices at those different destinations.

zombietooth

This is the best advice on the thread. The Matrix by ITA is the best airline search engine. Link here:

https://matrix.itasoftware.com

With it, you can search all airports within a 1,000 miles (I use 1,000 because it only means a ~2 hr positioning flight from my home airport) by changing the range (click "Nearby" when you enter the airport code), which gives you incredible options. Click on "advanced controls" then enter C:UA+ for the "Outbound/Return routing codes", select your dates or range of dates and your preferred cabin and you will see every possible UA flight combo.

wjbesh

True, and I always do feel a little cheated flying NY-LHR, frankly I wish they'd fly in circles or something and give us an extra hour of sleep.

Although depending on OP's travel plans she could be hamstrung by the biggest pitfall of the day flights...the entire day disappears (you wake up early, head to the airport, board a plane, fly a little, and then it's suddenly late at night and dark outside).

Bartonio

Some cities are cheaper to fly to/through than others. I am going Boston to London in business in a month and a half on this routing on OneWorld: BOS->JFK->DUB->LHR. The total price (in business) is cheaper than the RT from Boston on AA in Economy Plus for the dates I'm traveling. From my research so far (using Google Flights to find the fares), Dublin and Madrid are by far the best business class trans-Atlantic fares I can find on AA. I'm flying coach from DUB to LHR, but it's about a 30 minute flight (from wheels up to wheels down) so no point in paying the extra price. I don't mind the layovers as I can use the lounges and it's been too long since I've last been to Dublin (since they eliminated smoking in pubs for anyone that can remember that far back - I'll be able to see all the way across Temple Bar).

findark

Or just throttle down and save gas. Wish they'd do that for TCON redeyes too

(not actually sure off the top of my head where the efficiency peak is for a jet engine)

dilanesp

You can try searching Priceline and some of the other aggregator sites. Sometimes you will see a ridiculously good deal show up there.

anc-ord772

Fly out of Canada

rmc1

This is one of the reasons why I love this flight. I stay at a hotel near LHR and arrive and go right to bed and wake up the next day at 7-8am and I'm instantly on European time with no jet lag at all. I'm doing similar thing on way home from Hawaii in July: take the afternoon flight to LAX and spend night in hotel and next morning fly back to the east coast. Of course, I don't sleep well on planes, not even in international first class, so that might have something to do with it. If you have the time the day flight to London is well worth it in my opinion.

rabilancia

I agree that it CAN be. I will be flying non-stop between Denver and London in June/July. I began tracking the flight using Google flights 330 days out. The fare started out around $5,000. When the fare dropped to around $2,500 (144 days ago -- 233 days before departure) I bought. See the attached Google flights chart. The fare has been on a roller coaster ride since then.

I got lucky, but one of my favorite sayings is that. "I'd rather be lucky than smart," but, "we make our own luck by being prepared to take advantage of opportunity when it is presented."

RoxyMountain

Wow, that is a really good price.

Is it possible for Google flights to send notifications as prices fall on a certain route/flight? I looked around and could not figure out how to do that.

WineCountryUA

If you are tracking the price, you will get notifications of changes, such as this one I received today
"Your tracked flight to Paris is now $2,336 (was $1,576)" Google Flights <[email protected]>