Cost of Business class?

Where are you looking? On the United website?

I just punched in some May dates. A United non stop Round Trip over night flight business class fare was $3994.

Frequent flyers will use miles or points to purchase these instead of cash.

You are apparently looking at one-way fares, which are much higher. As noted above, the round-trip price is much lower. Also, as Carol suggested, they may be releasing those seats to mileage plan members and they are getting booked up that way.

United will offer deals to people already booked on flights to use points or cash to upgrade as it gets closer to the flight date. For example, on my last flight (London to US), I was offered a deal to upgrade to Premier Plus for either 20,000 points or a certain dollar amount about 2 weeks before my flight; I took the 20,000 point deal. There was also an offer to upgrade to business (I don’t remember the offer amount).

A few of thoughts on this:

-Seat maps aren't a good indicator of how many tickets remain. Those of us who are obsessive about things like seat selection may find it hard to imagine, but there are just as many (or more) people totally blase about it. There are ways to look up real inventory—ExpertFlier is the best for that—but they're limited without paying for a subscription.

-There are consolidators, ticket brokers, cruise lines, and tour companies that might sell a price without an itinerary, and only confirm the itinerary closer in. (The underside of these look like trading options on futures.) If you've ever seen a cruise or tour that promotes "air included" or "$300 business class air" if could be this kind of deal. Note that while this is a 'third party booking', it's quite different from buying on Expedia or CheapoAir.

-Lastly... Yes, some people are paying those prices. Well, their companies are. It's been slow to return after Covid, but business travel is back,. Seat-miles for business travel are somewhere over 75% of pre-Covid levels while revenue is somewhere around 85%.

I've heard the lie flat seats make a world of difference. I guess I'll never know personally.

As others have mentioned, it’s a few things:

• People using airline miles
• People getting offered much lower prices to upgrade their current tickets. Recently I got an offer to upgrade my economy class seat to Paris on Delta to a business class lie flat seat for $1300 (one way). I’m tempted, but I don’t sleep well on planes, even in business, and the ticket was pricey to begin with, so I don’t think I’m going to do it. Still, I don’t think it’s an entirely unreasonable price. An $8500 ticket wouldn’t even be in my budget, but $1300 is low enough for me to at least consider it.
• Business travelers. I rarely travel internationally for work, but when I do, we’re allowed to fly business. Many times, I see my colleagues buy tickets in the $8-$12K range and it’s always approved. I’m guessing there are people who have to fly for work at the last minute for some reason and someone is willing to pay that price.

Big Mike, yes the lay flat seats make a difference, we were upgraded from Tel Aviv to Heathrow last month to business class. It was Heaven on a Plane.
We tried to upgrade our Paris tickets for our trip this month but there were no seats available. I’m sure gonna try and convince my hubby for a trip we are cinsidering in September. It’s not outrageous when you are only purchasing one ticket, but for two it becomes very pricy.

As others have noted, the seat maps shown are not a good indicator of how many seats have been sold, b/c not all seats have been selected or assigned. For United, there is an "Expert Mode" which you can enable in your profile. With that enabled, for any flight you select the website will display a line with the available fare classes and number of seats available.

This article explains how to do it: https://thepointsguy.com/guide/united-expert-mode/

United's fare classes may be found here: https://cwsi.net/united.htm
(And Delta's: https://cwsi.net/delta.htm)

My strategy thus far has been....

Buy premium economy seats, early enough to get great pricing. (Business class fares at over 6K is out of my budget!)
And check upgrade prices. While Premium is not Business class, it's good enough for me. Some PE is better than others. Of course this is all subjective. I like the AF PE... and lots of people dont.

I was able to upgrade to business class Swiss from SFO to Zurich for $550.

There is no secret way of obtaining cheap business/first class tickets. The later you leave it the higher the prices become so it's best to book as far out as possible. The major airlines often have multiple sales throughout the year and good prices can be found for premium seats. Different days often offer varying rates, travelling on days that aren't regularly flown by business travellers can reduce the price and opting to upgrade your flight if offered by the airline can be a very cost effective way of bagging a premium seat however an upgrade isn't always available.

For a complimentary upgrade it's best to be a member of the airline's frequent flyer programme. I recently flew business from Phoenix to LHR and my two son's were booked in Premium however they were both upgraded to business. Not sure of the reason why as we only found out when they checked their seat assignment on the BA app however both are Silver status with BA's frequent flyer programme so this was likely the reason why.

My husband's business class strategy: fly business on overnight flights to get the lie flat seat and PE on day flights. I'm not sure what his status on Delta is now-before Covid it was the highest one, but not now. Still, we often are upgraded to PE and a few days before our trip. My guess is that when coach is full and the higher classes are not, they look for people with status that they can upgrade so they can resell the coach tickets. I was also recently on a rare not full Delta flight from Charleston to Atlanta and before takeoff, they moved some people from middle seats in PE to business and it appeared to be for the purpose of giving people in PE more space.

In recent years for long-haul flights we splurge for PE. Age has something to do with that.

For other flights less than 3-4 hours economy is fine. We've found quite a difference in the quality of PE depending upon the airline. For the first time I got upgraded to first class on United from Dulles to Seattle, and other than a bigger seat and priority boarding it was nothing special in any way. Sort of disappointing for what is likely the only time we'll fly first-class.

We do have a budget. A flight for two PE from Dulles to Edinburgh in July ran us about $3,000 total, booked nearly a year out. Looking at Poland in 2024 and it's $4,000 PE for two. That's for sure our limit. If the price goes up we'll look at Plan B, which is either Wales of something stateside.

Bus Class flying to Europe if overnight. If a daytime flight from east coast to London, Premium Economy,
Always Bus Class to Asia, NZ, Australia. There is a great difference in prices among airlines.

We hoard our airline miles and use those for overseas trips, but not for first class. We try for premium/comfort plus but will not pay or use miles for first class. I just prefer more trips vs a splurge in seating.

My husband travels quite a bit for work. Prepandemic he went to Germany monthly. He will not opt for first class unless that is all that is left.

Oh, and by the way, yes, people actually do pay those fares to buy those flights. They’re not necessarily people going on vacation but I have a relative who is an attorney for a very large law firm, and if tomorrow he needs to go to London he buys a full fare business class plane ticket and he gets on it and they reimburse him (and they bill his client but that’s the way the game works) .