Value in booking international air 2: Mixing Cabins

In My first volume, I talked about how I can sometimes lower cost on premium flights by mixing/matching carriers.  This time I’m going to bring up how I can sometimes do this my mixing/matching *cabins”

I just got called for South Africa.  Into Johannesburg on April 6th and back from Capetown on April 20th.  This is a looong flight and the client wants to keep it to one connection and keep those connections relatively short.  I’ve put constraints into Google flights for business class, one stop and travel time less than 23 hours.   We get a very high (even for this route) rate of over $12k.  Below that You can see this rate for this particular route with times on United.Com

Below that, you can see how I was able to nearly half that price by downgrading the flights within the USA to Economy Plus. First lets look at the fare on United.com. This is for one stop with the shortest overall travel time.

Now let’s look at it as I do.

first you must know that for United, business class is P, Z, D, C and J.  (In order of price, usually) and Economy is generally Y and Below, but “B” B is economy plus (not to be confused with premium plus).   When we dissect the rules, we find that the second cheapest fare requires  “Z” space to be on the international leg, but ‘within the USA’ we can utilize B.   If the flights are looked at together, only a “C” fare is available (which is how we get to over $12K) if looked at separately, Z and B are available.   The 4-5 hour flight to/from Newark will only have extra leg room, but the 14-16 hour flights to/from South Africa will be in Lay Flat “Polaris class”. 

We are going to Book B Class on the short flights (Economy Plus) for the Layflats on the long flights (Z)

First, let’s find the fare we want (the ultra low “P fare” is possible, but the schedule demanded for it is heinous)

So, We are going for the lowest “Z” fare.

We can see here that within the USA “B” Economy Plus and “R” space (premium plus, which isn’t often available on flights within the USA.

If we look at the space with the flights togoether, only C space is available, which is how United (and Google) came up with that $12K+ fare.

But Separately B and Z space is available (so is P, but for P, you can only use P it is not “combinable”.)

Many people don’t care so much about the cushy seat on the short haul, but South Africa is a LONG flight. Many people want to cut the overall travel time as much as possible and ensure their comfort on those brutally long flights across the Atlantic to the Southern Hemisphere.

In this case, I nearly cut the airfare in Half. $12,025 is now down to $6524.30.
Having that first flight in first IS nice, but is it' worth $2500 per direction? Not for most.