Money Hack: Save thousands on business class flights
Clean, simple and expansive savings.
Everyone knows you get a lot more leg room and arm space on business class flights, but after paying an arm and a leg for it you might not be able to use that space to the fullest.
Business class fares are just really disproportionately expensive when flying out of Australia. However, a solution is to fly the first leg to a different market and then claim their more reasonable business class fares as your own. From Australia, this market is Asia.
The hack
Use Asia as a stopover on long flights and pick out flights that make it work. This alone can save thousands.
For example, it's easy to drop over $5,000 on a roundtrip business class flight from Sydney to London. But fly to economy Phuket first, and you can score Phuket-London for around $1,500 return.
Going to the USA? Fiji Airways is consistently one of the cheapest options around, and you can also work the business class trick here. With a bit of luck you might book a business class return flight from Fiji to the USA (from inside Australia) for about $2,500 all up.
Bangkok is also a great stopover, especially because Qatar runs relatively inexpensive flights around the world from here. For example, you might find a business class flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles on Qatar for under $2,000 return.
All you need to do in order to pull off this hack is to stay alert for cheap business class flights from within Asia to your intended destination. Subscriptions can be a useful way of finding these, but you can hunt for yourself at any time through cheap-flight services such as Skyscanner (bottom of the page).
The hard part is finding a good value way to reach your Asian midway point, ideally without landing in cattle class. Frequent flyer points are a good way of "paying" for this first leg, or you could simply fly dirt cheap economy and give yourself something to look forward to later.
Either way, it's a super simple and easy way to save thousands on business class flights.
finder money hacks is a bi-weekly roundup of the latest tips and tricks to improve your finances. Check back every Wednesday and Saturday for new hacks.
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