Once you try flying business class, it’s not easy to go back. There’s nothing quite like sipping on champagne while the rest of the plane boards, reclining your seat into a bed after dinner, and sleeping like a baby before arriving refreshed and awake at your destination.
A business class flight is a very special trip for those of us used to the economy, but low prices are very hard to come by. Whether domestic or international, it always seems like the seats in the front of the plane are just too expensive to justify.
So, do discount business class flights actually exist? Or are we stuck with a sad amount of recline and legroom for a reasonable price?
The truth is that there are absolutely business class flight deals out there. They aren’t even as rare as you might think! If you know when, where, and how to search, you can certainly score cheap business class tickets.
What We Cover
- Tips for Finding the Cheapest Business Class Flights
- Sign Up for Deal-Finding Services
- Use a Good Flight Search Engine
- Set Price-Drop Alerts
- Allow for Flexibility in Dates
- Look Out for Upgrade Offers via Email
- Ask About Upgrades at the Airport
- Use Credit Card Points to Purchase or Upgrade Your Ticket
- Get Co-Branded Credit Cards with Status Perks
- What are the Best Business Class Airlines?
- American Airlines
- United Airlines
- Delta Airlines
- JetBlue
- British Airways
- Swiss International Air Lines
- Singapore Airlines
- Emirates
Tips for Finding the Cheapest Business Class Flights
If you are looking for a discounted business class flight, it’s important to follow at least a few tips below. Most of these methods don’t require much time or effort from you. The more you use, the better chances you have!
Sign Up for Deal-Finding Services
An easy way to access the best business flight deals is to sign up for a service that lets someone else search. When they find cheap flights too good to pass up, they will immediately email you all the details you need to book them.
Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) is our favorite, which can yield amazing business-class deals. Their team of deal-finders is searching around the clock for fares in economy, business, and first-class on domestic and international flights and from almost any airport to any destination.
You sign up and tell them which airports you are interested in departing from. That’s it – they will let you know whenever they see a great deal that leaves your airport. Another great cheap flight newsletter is Dollar Flight Club, which has a free plan.
I like pairing both of these together by purchasing the paid plan with Going.com and then using a free plan on Dollar Flight Club. Then, I set a rule in my Gmail email inbox for their emails to automatically go to a certain folder.
Another huge advantage to using a service like Going.com is that besides standard discounted fares, they are also looking for the elusive business class mistake fare.
You’ll want to grab these error fares as soon as they pop up – some lucky travelers recently scored business class tickets worth $16,000 each for just a few hundred dollars.
See Related: Cheapest Places to Fly Around the World
Use a Good Flight Search Engine
Using a flight search engine is probably the most important tip for finding a cheap business-class ticket. Without one, you are stuck going airline by airline and date by date, which will take many hours.
To cut down your search time exponentially and immediately get an idea of what the cheapest business class fares are for your destination and dates, use a website like Skyscanner, Momondo, or Google Flights.
Most importantly, you will see all airlines that fly the route and their prices with a single search. But their advantages do not stop there – in fact, many of the next tips rely on the tools of these sites.
You can use a VPN for cheaper flights as you’ll limit the amount of cookie tracking and geographic targeting, but that’s mainly for using travel agency websites or direct deals with airlines.
Remember that the default prices on these sights are for an economy class ticket. If you want business class seats, change the cabin class to business, as I did on Skyscanner above.
| Search Engine | Notable Features | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Agoda | Simple interface, Lowest prices on carriers like Icelandic, WOW, and Norwegian | Budget-friendly international business class flights |
| Skyscanner | Easy to use, though not as user-friendly as Google Flights | Finding cheap tickets in general |
| Google Flights | User-friendly interface, Provides comprehensive results | Overall best option for cheap flights |
| Skiplagged | Unique “hidden city” deals, where you book a flight with a layover and skip the second leg | Unconventional cheap flight deals |
| Point.me | Searches many airline award programs in real-time with one search | Using points and miles to book business class award tickets |
See Related: Skyscanner vs Hopper: What is the Difference?
Set Price-Drop Alerts
In order to catch business class deals, you have to act quickly. As you can imagine, any airline sale is quickly taken advantage of by travelers like you looking for a cheap business class flight!
In order to know when to go online and potentially make a purchase, set alerts to be notified any time a ticket price drops, once again, you’ll do this via a travel search engine and have the advantage of knowing about price drops on any airline.
Sites like Google Flights, Kayak, and Skyscanner all have this price change alert function. Simply activate it, like I’ve done above on Google Flights, by clicking the Track Prices button, and you’ll get emails when a deal appears for your trip.
You can often also set these alerts to tell you about good prices on any date, which brings us to our next tip.
Allow for Flexibility in Dates
To fly business class for a low price, you must have some flexibility in your trip dates. Cheap business class fares often only appear for limited and particular dates.
Hopefully, you have this flexibility in your schedule and don’t mind shifting your trip a bit to get a deal. Use the price grid function on your flight search engine to see prices for a few days before and after your target dates, as I’ve done on Kayak above.
As you can see, leaving one day later than my target departure date saved almost $500! The differences can be even more dramatic than that, so don’t skip this tip.
Many flight search engines also have a broader indicator for flexible dates, like Kayak’s color-coded calendar below. You can view entire months to know when the cheapest deals exist throughout the year, which is a great feature if you are pondering a trip to a certain place.
See Related: Kayak.com Review
Look Out for Upgrade Offers via Email
One of the best ways to get cheap business class flights is to pay an upgrade fee when the departure is approaching, and the airline hasn’t sold all the seats.
Rather than searching for business class flight deals, this tip involves booking an economy ticket and hoping for the best, so it may not be the best idea if you are dead-set on business class seats for your trip.
Most major airlines will attempt to sell business class upgrades a few days before the flight takes off if there are still unsold business class seats. You will often get an email with the cost; sometimes, a bidding system lets you pick a price you are willing to pay.
For the former, you’ll confirm the upgrade immediately if you pay the fee. The latter situation will have you waiting until around 24 hours before the flight to see if your bid was accepted.
I had a wonderful success story upgrading to a business class seat with this method on Iberia. I paid around $750 in total for the Madrid to New York trip segment, and I was very pleased with that deal while sipping Spanish wine and eating gazpacho at 40,000 feet!
See Related: Ways to Find Cheap Flights to Europe
Ask About Upgrades at the Airport
Similar to the above tip, this one involves buying an economy fare class and trying to score a discounted business class seat at the last minute. If it’s an international flight with a European carrier, this happens more often than you’d think.
I love using Going.com or Dollar Flight Club to score a cheap flight deal for an economy-class seat with a European carrier. Then, when I’m at the gate, I ask to upgrade to business class, which is usually offered at a steep discount.
When airlines are unsuccessful in selling out business class in advance, and email upgrade offers don’t fill the seats, they often offer deals at the check-in counter.
Sometimes, the upgrade price will be displayed or announced on the intercom. However, it’s best to ask an agent about this. There are very often a few lie-flat seats left for them to sell.
Thanks to an airport upgrade offer in Tokyo, I had my first business class experience. I was flying Air Asia home to Honolulu and was scheduled to work the same day as my arrival.
Getting to sleep on lie-flat seats on a long-haul flight like that can make all the difference for feeling good upon arrival – and allow you to actually make it to work!
See Related: Best Airports for Layovers Around the World
Use Credit Card Points to Purchase or Upgrade Your Ticket
Want to know the best way to pay less for business class flights? Not paying for them at all! That is the magic of points and miles; the right strategy can pay you nothing for business class life.
That is why it is so important to sign up for airline loyalty programs any time you fly. Get to know the airline alliances: Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam. Why? Because you can usually redeem miles on one airline for a flight on a partner airline.
Have you been flying United your whole life, or just hit a big sign-up bonus with one of their credit cards and now have a ton of miles?
You can use them to fly to Europe on Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines… and so on. Your potential free business class ticket just got a whole lot more likely.
Beyond using points to pay for the entire ticket, you can use them to upgrade an economy ticket. You don’t need to wait for an offer – log onto your reservation or call a customer service agent and see how many points are needed.
See Related: Guide To Ryanair Flights: Expert Tips & Tricks For Budget Travel
Get Co-Branded Credit Cards with Status Perks
Let’s look at another way to pay nothing for an upgrade to business class – this time, without even paying in miles. You can get a complimentary upgrade to business class with the right loyalty status.
You can get status faster with the right credit card, along with many other perks. For example, the United Club Infinite card gets you up to 3,000 Premier Qualifying Points after certain spending requirements, which is enough to reach Premier Silver status.
That status is enough to put you on the upgrade list and on your way to reaching even higher levels of status with more flying. You’ll also get free bags, free club lounge access, priority check-in, and more. Don’t underestimate the power of the proper credit card!
See Related: Best Credit Cards for Travel Perks
What are the Best Business Class Airlines?
If you are lucky enough to spot cheap business class tickets (or better yet, get them for free with an upgrade or with points), you may wonder if some business class airlines are better than others.
While you are almost certainly going to have an amazing time when at the pointy end of the plane, the truth is that business class experiences differ across carriers. Some are known for their in-flight experience, some for their business class cabins, and some for both.
American Airlines
Business travelers love traveling on American Airlines. Not only does American Airlines offer business class, but they also still have first class. These products are known as Flagship Business and Flagship First, respectively.
The great thing about American Airlines is that their domestic business class flights are often true business class seats, lie-flat and all. This is rare on other airlines, which often sell economy seats with a bit more legroom and the middle seat blocked off as business on their smaller planes.
When flying business class on American Airlines, look for their wide-body aircraft like the 777 and the 787 to get the Flagship Business experience. You can also find it on the A321T, a narrow-body configured with a more luxurious cabin for transcontinental flying.
See Related: Why So Many Flight Cancellations? Here’s What You Need to Know
United Airlines
Another one of the American legacy carriers, United has a fantastic business class product known as Polaris Business Class. This product is found on most of United’s international and long-haul domestic flights.
Polaris features direct aisle access for every seat, lie-flat pods with tons of privacy, high-quality in-flight entertainment, and great food. Business class passengers on United also benefit from private Polaris lounges at certain airports, separate from the more crowded United Club lounges.
Delta Airlines
To complete the so-called Big-Three of the US is Delta, with their famous Delta One business class cabin. Delta One features luxurious, lie-flat seats in individual suites with fine dining experiences in the sky.
You can find Delta One on most of Delta’s long-haul fleet. While that sounds great, take note of the word most. Delta recently acquired some planes from LATAM Airlines, configured with a much inferior business-class product. If you are flying from Atlanta to Dublin or Santiago, you may not experience the Delta One product and instead get a more crowded and less luxurious cabin.
To be fair, the vast majority of Delta travelers will get the wonderful Delta One experience. Just be sure to do your research on the aircraft operating your flight!
See Related: Delta Airlines Review
JetBlue
Some people think JetBlue is a low-cost carrier, but I’ve never seen them that way. After all, they offer free satellite television and great snacks in economy class, and they have a fantastic business class product.
JetBlue Mint class was recently overhauled when the airline began its first European flights to London. Despite being an all-narrow body airline, the front of the plane contains lie-flat seats in a 1-1 configuration. It’s a very intimate and luxurious experience, and they’ve done an incredible job with it.
The best tip when flying JetBlue Mint is to look for the Mint Studio in row one if the aircraft is equipped with it. The Studio is an even larger seat with a separate seat in case a friend wants to come to hang out with you during the flight. Plus, who doesn’t love being in the first seat?
British Airways
British Airways has always been an important player in US and UK traffic and connecting passengers far beyond. The route between New York and London is statistically the most profitable in the world, which is quite driven by business travelers!
British Airways calls business class Club World one of the best ways to fly across the pond. Of course, you will find lie-flat seats with access to the aisle, which is a great option if you have a layover after a long international flight.
Especially unique is that window seats alternate between forward-facing and rear-facing, which can be cool for an aviation nerd like myself.
See Related: What Affects Flight Prices? The Influencing Factors
Swiss International Air Lines
Everything from Switzerland exudes quality and luxury, and their airline is no exception. Swiss International Air Lines, or simply SWISS, does a great job in both business class and first class.
The seat pods on SWISS are extra-spacious, and the food is delicious. The best part, in my opinion, is the built-in massage function. Who wouldn’t want a massage at 40,000 feet?
Singapore Airlines
You might be surprised that you don’t need to visit Singapore to fly on Singapore Airlines and experience its luxurious offerings.
They fly from the United States to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. You can also fly them intra-Europe from Milan to Barcelona and Copenhagen to Rome.
Why would you go out of your way for such flights? Because Singapore Airlines offers an epic business class experience. Besides the high-quality seats, food, and service, the middle seats have a removable barrier that can create a double bed for couples.
See Related: How to Book Cheap One-Way International Flights
Emirates
It would be a sin not to mention Emirates, one of the most luxurious airlines in the world. While they connect the world through their Dubai hub, you can also fly their famous A380 from JFK to Milan and their 777 from Newark to Athens.
Everything from the wood trim, fine leather, and fancy champagne screams luxury on Emirates. After all, they are the airline that put showers on their planes, taking ‘feeling refreshed on arrival to a new level.
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