I would only consider flying business or first for private reasons if I had to fly long-haul overnight and needed to be able to function/work the next day. However, a couple of sleeping pills and an economy seat are a much cheaper option!!
I would fly business on a long-haul day-time flight if work paid and expected me to work during the flight.
Most of the time however I need to fly to Gatwick and only Easyjet are going there so its not even an option... does speedy boarding counts as an upgrade?
Long haul its almost always economy class for me. Sometimes I briefly consider splurging then remember what else I could do with the money and it puts me off.
I was upgraded once long haul to south america and it did make a tremendous difference. I arrived much fresher. On the way back, by the time of landing with fitful bouts of uncomfortable sleep, my body was a contorted aching mess.
I also do not own a tv... i use a projector instead
We have a question which cannot be answered with no explanation as to why the information is needed, and yet lots of people are replying randomly.
OP: people fly business because they can and want to. Same for first class.
It is as dumb a question as "why do people buy a Rolex when they could buy a Swatch?".
What is worse is the gold card holder travelling economy with their partner and kids and wants to bring them all into the business lounge, and then gets very upset when the lounge attendant tells them they can only bring in one guest.... they seem to think that their kids don't count as guests
First / Business class? I have trouble finding flights affordable for me in business class. To make it cheaper, I take flights very early in the morning to airporst far out of town, including stopovers of more than 12 hours not leaving the airport area. So I stay at the airport (no, not in a hotel, just the airport) overnight. Or in front of the airport, what happenend in Geneva when we arrived at 11 p.m. for a flight the next moring at 6 a.m. problem was, the airport was already closed, so we had to stay outside in a freezing night.
If you don't want to end up sleeping on the miami airport carped at 18°C and listening to stupid anouncements every 6 minutes (the current time, be carful to not leave your luggage alone, smoking is not allowed), check:
http://www.sleepinginairports.net/
This also involves booking all flights by myself on the ned, checking the price for weeks and hoping to not miss the connecting flight because I use different airlines.
But maybe me as an ex-student without any money am not supposed to answer this poll
(btw: If I had the money, of course I would fly in first class. always. no matter how long the flight is!)
In terms of cost of a plane. A person we ran into in the private jet industry on vacation said a private jet for 10 transatlantic 50k. So no more expensive than Business if you get 10 rich mates together. Obviously the domestics are much bigger planes but I can see First class paying for all the costs of the plane (fuel, wages, etc) but not the company overheads CEO salary office staff. I doubt they sell out often. I flew First class once and there were 2 of us out of 6 seats, and I didn't pay (miles).
A lot of the decisions are made at the gate not at check in.
It was a pretty decent conversation (not a flippant remark) and it was specifically said you could fly transatlantic in a group for the same cost per person as business class fares.
Never tested it, but the guy said he was in the industry and in pricing. Not sure what planes he was talking.
They even paid the salaries at the end of the month......