If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would you?

[paultiffen]

Hi,

Thinking about this from a behavioural economics type perspective. If you were travelling in J to Europe and the airline or your work offered 100 per hour to sit in Y would you take it?

I've used this framing to make peace with a few crazy itineraries but interested to see different points of view. Especially as I'm young and can get through a flight in Y.

Would it make a difference who paid for the flight?

 

[mella2007]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

I've sat in Y to Europe at my cost many times....my own business, so all self funded. If hypothetically a business wanted to pay me to sit in Y, yes not a problem.

 

[casanovawa]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Depends how much i paid for the flight, if it added up that it paid for a decent amount of my original price then yes i would consider it...

As i had my first J class flight itinerary last year i have now experienced it, so if i hadn't it might be different... Because i use cheap methods like USDM to buy my J flights i know i will be able to afford it in the future so another tick (that it wouldn't be my only time) and because a USDM redemption only costs about $2500 in J, 14 hours times $100 for the long leg to Europe would reimburse me a decent amount of the whole trip, if it was the whole flight well i would definitely end up in profit for the whole Y redemption...

Different if you were paying full fare...

And yes, Y won't kill you, be good if they brought up the food etc from J...

 

[Febs]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Would it make a difference who paid for the flight?

Very much so! Let's take SYD-LHR, and call it 20 hours. A J flight (depending on the month) would be say $7k...so sitting in Y you'd get $2k back, and effectively pay $5k for a Y trip to LHR?

No thanks.

 

[IGetAround]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

The short answer for me is 'yes'.

The long answer is that my experiences in J have all been where the marginal cost was something like 4k pts per hour (eg 10k pts to upgrade PER-MEL for 3 hrs, 20k pts for DRW-BNE-SYD 5.5 hrs). Converting those points outlays to a dollar value (based on an 'sign up' fee for a credit card of 15k pts for $100) results in paying about $20 per hour for J. Not sure I'd pay much more than that - I'm also quite young and also happily sit through Y (admittedly usually in 80A) as long as there is AVOD and beer.

In contrast, because most of my travel is long haul Y a few times a year, so I place a higher dollar value on a hot shower in the lounge between flights than on onboard comfort. I'm 'paying' perhaps $200 extra on fares to achieve SG this year purely for this lounge access.

An interesting thread - my old boss refers to my reducing everything to a dollar value as 'life optimisation'.

 

[casanovawa]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

my old boss refers to my reducing everything to a dollar value as 'life optimisation'

Basic law of economics, we all have more wants than we will have the money to cover, so a bit of optimsation never goes astray, as long as you don't let it paralyse you...

 

[Awesom Andy]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

As long as I still get J SCs and points, I'll consider it.

 

[FrustratedQP]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

No, I like my comfort and am happy to pay for it.

 

[paultiffen]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

What price would you consider it at?

No, I like my comfort and am happy to pay for it.

 

[FrustratedQP]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

What price would you consider it at?

I don't know, I haven't thought about it much, fortunately commercial pressures, keep the prices fairly reasonable. Don't get me wrong, there is a price, I just haven't had to think about it yet.

 

[paultiffen]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Ok a few other theoreticals:

1) How do you think your individual price would be affected having knowledge of both compared to ignorance of J?
2) If you had to strip out the effect of any bonus for status or points etc how much would the price change? Possible way of valuing points + status?
3) Work theoretically offers 1000 in hand if you don't fly business (although I'm too junior to claim) as a way of aligning incentives I guess. If it's your own business then obviously its your profit or loss. What would be your ratio of change in your own money to fly business to that that work would have to pay you?

Sorry 3 is poorly phrased but hopefully someone knows what I'm getting at, it's a way of measuring how aligned your incentives are.

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

No.

An easy example is this:

SYD-LHR-SYD = 40 hours
Cheap Y price: $1800 or $45/hr
Cheap J price: $8000 or $200/hr

So purely based on financials, it's worth at least $155/hour.

Problem is 90% of decisions people make are NOT financially based and to get a clear understanding of the magic point where folks would downgrade themselves would be a contributing combination of their perceived value from premium cabins which is entirely subjective.

 

[chrisb]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

As others have pointed out, $100/hour doesn't even cover the fare difference. $1000/hour and we'll talk.


Looking at this another way. If my company did have a J policy (and they don't) but said fly Y instead of J on PER-SYD-LAX return and we'll give you ~$3800 cash (~ 19 hours in the air each way) then yes I would.

 

[paultiffen]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Exactly I'm interested in how much the phrasing would affect people's decisions or having to explicitly consider cost. Would someone then think wow 155 per hour thats a good paying job what do I need to do?

 

[paultiffen]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Does that mean you would pay 40 000 for a return flight to Europe in J if that was the cheapest? 40 hours * 1000?

As others have pointed out, $100/hour doesn't even cover the fare difference. $1000/hour and we'll talk.


Looking at this another way. If my company did have a J policy (and they don't) but said fly Y instead of J on PER-SYD-LAX return and we'll give you ~$3800 cash (~ 19 hours in the air each way) then yes I would.

 

[medhead]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

So for a 20 hour flight you're saying that work will pay you $2000 so that they only have to buy you a Y fare instead of business. Basically trading off what, maybe $4000 of paid benefit for a $2000 cash payment. In theory I'd accept that, in fact I currently pay my employer half of the tax benefit I get from salary sacrifice.

But really it would depend on what I'm expected to do when I arrive? Is there a day or weekend for recovery? Do I have to travel on my weekend? Or is my work prepared to pay me to travel on their time?

For a business owner the same questions arise. Is it cost effective in terms of the owners time to travel in economy? How much is a day or half a day of their time worth for recovery versus the cost saving between business and economy?

 

[Awesom Andy]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

No.

An easy example is this:

SYD-LHR-SYD = 40 hours
Cheap Y price: $1800 or $45/hr
Cheap J price: $8000 or $200/hr

So purely based on financials, it's worth at least $155/hour.

Problem is 90% of decisions people make are NOT financially based and to get a clear understanding of the magic point where folks would downgrade themselves would be a contributing combination of their perceived value from premium cabins which is entirely subjective.

In the month of May, China Southern's J fare is $5847, which works out to be $146.18 per hour. That makes the difference pretty much just $100 per hour... Now it gets a little bit more difficult to decide.

 

[medhead]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

No.

An easy example is this:

SYD-LHR-SYD = 40 hours
Cheap Y price: $1800 or $45/hr
Cheap J price: $8000 or $200/hr

So purely based on financials, it's worth at least $155/hour.

Problem is 90% of decisions people make are NOT financially based and to get a clear understanding of the magic point where folks would downgrade themselves would be a contributing combination of their perceived value from premium cabins which is entirely subjective.

The problem is that situation of exactly providing the cost for the full J fare provides no benefit to the business. Surely the question is about both parties benefiting from the arrangement. If I was a business owner I would never offer something that is going to cost the same. Might as well just buy the business fare and get my 2-5% rebate from qantas business.

 

[chrisb]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Does that mean you would pay 40 000 for a return flight to Europe in J if that was the cheapest? 40 hours * 1000?

No, what I'm saying is that if I paid for the flight in J with my own money then it would take a lot to drag me out of that J seat.

 

[ferni]

Re: If you had a flight booked in J and were offered 100 per hour to sit in Y. Would

Interesting question and similar to something I had thought about before.

How much do people who fly business/first pay for a night at a hotel?

Let say a J flight return to USA is 6k... so 3k each way... or say 2k each way more than a Y ticket. So you're paying 2k for one nights accommodation and a couple of meals... Would you pay 2k for a nights accommodation in a fancier room/hotel (diff in comfort between Y and J?)

Same question applied between J and F... Lets say F is 10k return/5k each way.. thats 2k diff each way compared to J... would you pay 2k for the extra food/comfort in a hotel equivalent between J and F?