I haven’t flown a premium cabin in almost two years now. I just decided that it’s not worth the extra miles. It’s not a rule, but lately I just can’t get myself to pull the trigger to pay extra for a lie-flat bed, even on international flights. Below are a few reasons we only fly economy:
The goal is to see more places
I have a limited amount of miles and a ton of places I’d like to go. If you tend to run low on your mileage balance, maybe you should book economy. But if you have a plethora of miles after booking your next two years’ trips, then upgrading to a premium cabin clearly doesn’t mean that you miss out on seeing more places.
Our case is a little different in that we’re full-time travelers. This means that 1) we use a ton of miles, and 2) we don’t earn miles outside of credit cards. High spendings and lower earnings.
We want our friends and family to see more places
Even if we did have tons of miles, we’d probably use more of them to fly our friends out. We’ve used our personal miles to fly people to Asia and South America in business class while we were in economy. Not because we’re nice people, but because it was the only availability left. Similarly we just dropped a ton of points so my mom could travel with us in Europe.
Honestly, if we weren’t flying economy, those friends, siblings, and parents couldn’t have joined us.
The only reason I actually prefer business class is the bed. I get a decent amount of sleep, so I don’t completely lose a day of travel. However, there’s a part of me that just wants to do it for my ego’s sake. It would be cool, for sure, but I don’t value the idea of flying business class more than seeing places.
Off-Peak Awards
I’m big on American Airlines right now and one thing AA does very well is provide generous off-peak pricing, including deeply discounted tickets to South America, Japan, Europe, Central America and Hawaii. Other airlines have similar models or discounts, but most of these “deals” seem to be for economy.
Availability
It’s funny when I think about all the hoops I’ve jumped through in the past to redeem the lie-flat best business class seats when plenty of economy seats were open. I have flown longer routes and changed my dates just to get the best seat.
It’s kind of crazy though, if I think about it in terms of availability. So if you’re having trouble finding the perfect seat, just fly economy.
Saving Money
There are so many great redemption rates out there for economy tickets, but people get caught up in “value,” when it’s not even saving them any money. Heck, it costs me money. For example, we were running low on miles on a recent trip and ended up paying $250 each on a short intra-europe flight. Using miles on vanity redemptions means that we later end up paying for our travel. In a roundabout way, the vanity redemption wasn’t actually free. The extra 35,000 miles could have been used to save money on travel at another time.
Conclusion
I’m not saying never redeem miles for business class flights, it’s certainly fun. But what I am saying is that the value is pure vanity. Saying that you got “10 cents per mile” is pure vanity metrics because you wouldn’t have spent that much on a flight in the first place.
And ultimately, something I’ve realized lately is that any time I redeem a first class ticket, I can’t redeem a ticket for someone else. Or it means I end up paying money out of pocket for my own travels later. It’s not wrong but as a not-wealthy, extroverted couple, we’ve slowed down on our “premium” redemptions.
What do you think? Do you fly economy or business class? And why? Would love to read your perspective.
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