Amazon Prime has "free" shipping, costs $100/year. Your cellphone plan has "free" text messaging, costs $79/month. Your postage has "free" tracking, costs $11.
Why, in particular in American, has the word "included" seemingly been vanished from the popular vocabulary to be replaced with "free?" Now what word do we use when something is ACTUALLY free?
Return flights are usually something like:
* economy 900USD
* premium 2000USD
* business 6,000USD
* first 10,000USD
So, I always go economy.
Not sure it's ever worth a month's wages (after tax) to have a bit of free champagne.
For example, I fly Singapore to Tokyo about once or twice a year, sometimes more often, always on Scoot, a budget airline run by Singapore Airlines. Upgrading from economy to ScootBiz costs as little as $80 with their "bid for biz" program. I always "bid for biz" and it's absolutely worth it: early boarding, free food, much more space (for yourself and your carry on), etc. So the marginal utility of the upgrade for me is worth more than $80.
At some level of net worth, flying First on a legacy airline to Tokyo, maybe Japan Airlines which I had to take in economy once for $1,500 vs the $200 or so Scoot can go down to, would have more utility to me than the $10,000 extra I'd have to fork out. I don't know what that net worth would be (probably north of 50 million), but I know that past perhaps a few million dollars in liquid assets, I would always fly business even at 3x the cost, and I know plenty of people in that situation doing exactly that. And there's people for whom flying SQ Suites [1] for $30,000 one way is a "discount" from flying the same route privately.
[1] reposting because such a fun read: http://dereklow.co/what-its-like-to-fly-the-23000-singapore-...
Even using American's post-devaluation chart (one-way):
* economy 35,000
* business 70,000
* first 90,000
So, buy miles when on sale, fly first at a significant discount subject to availability.
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=quadratic+fit+%7B1,900... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log+fit+%7B1,35000%7D+...
When I woke up at my destination, significantly less jetlagged and actually rested, I said "now I understand."
I still don't pay for it, but it's certainly worth something.
Sometimes you get lucky. I booked 1st class for my xmas trip home last year, and it was only $100 more than the comfort seat upgrade and 1 checked bag that I was going to spend anyway.
This is only my experience on long flights. In 2007 I had a $600 coach seat from NYC to Ireland (may have been a connection I do not recall). The first-class seats were in the upper $4k range.
My wife and I fly from the northern east coast of the US to the southern east coast once a year, the tickets are roughly $650 total for coach (including $50/person for the "Comfort +" seats). First class has never risen past ~$950.
I'd fly business every single flight I ever took if it was only 2x. IMO the airlines are missing a huge business opportunity to provide all-business-class travel.