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How much does it cost? What do you pay for that ticket and level of service?
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If you have to ask....
A typical round trip (full fare) first class airfare from LAX or IAD/SFO/JFK to SYD, NRT, HKG etc. is between $16 and $18K. Business will run $8 to $10K. Coach could be $3k or less.
But when I've flown either my company paid for it or we used FF miles (my wife and I have roughly 2M now). I've never paid full fare out of my pocket but I've frequently paid for discounted first, business or coach. Those fares are cheaper than you think- my wife and I recently flew first Dulles to Munich first class UA for $2,200 per seat RT. You get a pretty good nights sleep and you earn miles for a lot less than walk up first class (probably about $8 to $10K for that trip).
Believe me most people sitting up front aren't paying for it themselves or are paying discounted fares- they're like me. Or they're movie stars/celebrities/really rich and older etc. who don't have the scratch for a private jet.
And there are plenty of people who aren't wealthy at all who do mileage runs (i.e. take advantage of discounted circuitious routes) to earn enough FF miles to sit up front. I've done it myself to retain status some years. (Status allows you to double your FF miles when you fly).
This Winter I hope to fly Singapore to Singapore, on to Bangkok, go to ****et, Vietnam or somewhere for a vacation, then take Thai to London or Frankfurt and then home (to Dulles/IAD). We'll either use miles, buy discount or both but we aren't going to fly coach except on short legs like Bangok to Hanoi or something like that. It's a game really.
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I think what needs to be remembered was that back in the day, I think the folks that traveled by air were pretty much the rich and privileged.
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For sure. You even wore a suit. If you were a kid you could go to the cockpit and they'd give you "wings". And you could even sit in the cockpit. But this was long before deregulation and terrorists. My little brother and I used to fly Atlanta to Charlotte and would run up and down the aisle and no one cared. Delta would run an empty DC-8 on that route. I vividly remeber my first flight (from Columbia SC to Tacoma, Washington- A DC-3 made numerous stops to Chicago (Piedmont as I recall). In Chicago the very first Pan Am 707 was doing flight tests and all the passengers (including me) moved to one side to see it (we were taxiing at the time). Then a DC-7C direct to Tacoma- Northwest Airlines.