What's the point of First Class?

[TravelTime]

I have United Silver (membership matching because of Marriott Platinum) and United Chase CC. The only thing that I can think of is that I have one more leg beyond either SFO or LAX. I think that may be the reason why Business Saver is not available to us.

Now that makes sense. We only book Business Saver on long distance nonstop flights out of SFO. SFO is a United hub so perhaps that explains the reason. At least we get something positive out of SFO.

 

[TravelTime]

It used to be so easy to get 1st class saver awards on the lay-flat seats. We did this 3 times 2004, 2007 and the last time 2010 for my family of four. Then after the recession airlines got greedy and realized they could push award seat seekers to the lesser 1st class planes by the way they release the award seats and make more money on the premium planes/seats so that is what they did.

They used to release all the award seats or at least the majority so that we could get the 4 1st class savers for a family of 4 at one time. Then they started releasing in drips and drabs so if you needed 4 seats together you needed to mix and match, maybe get 2 savers and 1 full point and maybe buy 1 seat or take the chance that you can somehow get the savers down the road on the same flight. Total BS.

When you could get the saver seats that was a fantastic value for a much more enjoyable flight. I always say when you fly in a nice 1st class cabin your vacation starts as soon you get on the plane. What's better than as soon as you get on the plane a champagne and OJ in a relaxing chair with very good audio options. The food, other than the ice cream sundaes, is never that good but we bring something we like aboard because you have the room to eat and I still believe that but now I have to pay a bigger points premium to do it.

When we were headed to Maui next month the best i could do was 2 savers and 1 full point FF seat and 1 paid to get the lay-flats. I still thought it was worth it. Now we're headed to STT instead, 1st class also because for that trip there were 1st class savers on most of the connections so we went for it.

I totally agree with you that when you have a business first class flat bed seat, the vacation begins immediately - in the United Lounge and then in the airplane because everything is so comfortable. Now United has a separate Polaris Lounge and a United Lounge in SFO. They used to combine the categories and used to only have one lounge for anyone with a Lounge Pass or flying Business or First Class.

I still do not have a problem getting Business Saver on flat bed seats out of SFO for long non stop flights. All our trips using Business Saver have been post-2010. It is definitely a more effective use of points from a value perspective than using points for cheap economy seats. We usually pay cash for economy seats and save our points for Business Saver class.