We have been looking into airfare for this trip over the last couple of days, trying to figure out estimated pricing, and any of the new airfare rules that have been implemented as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are still looking into flying to Zurich, Switzerland for the start of the trip, and departing from Munich, Germany to fly home.
For the overnight portion of the flight over to Europe, we always like to find planes with a two seat configuration for the window seats, which we like best because we do not have to be interrupted by a third passenger, or be the ones to interrupt them during the portion of the overnight flight where we try to get a little bit of sleep.
Unfortunately, many of the newer planes have gone to a three wide seating arrangement for all rows (3-3-3) instead of our preferred 2-4-2 arrangement. Obviously the newer seating arrangement gives the newer planes more capacity across their width, but this means we now have to share the window seats with a fellow passenger, which is not something we prefer. So far, we have avoided this on all of our flights over to Europe, but the availability of the two seat arrangement of these flights is becoming scarce as older planes are retired.
We do not mind the newer configuration on flights back to the US, they are during daytime hours, and we are not trying to get overnight sleep. For the return flight, we would most likely choose middle row seats anyway so that we do not have to deal with a third passenger trying to get in or out of our row, or us having to cross over them if we had the two seats closest to the window.
I did a little research on Google and found that there is the ability to get what is termed as “mixed class” tickets for some airlines. Mixed class allows you to purchase different seating classes for each segment of the flight. It is a little tricky to figure out, and some airlines do not allow online purchase of tickets in this arrangement.
The concept we would use is to fly economy for all of the flights except for the overnight flight segment to Europe, where we would choose business class to have more sleeping comfort. We actually looked at flights through United, which already had the lowest economy pricing for the entire flight, roughly $1,500 per person for standard economy flights that give us one free bag and allow us to choose our seats.
I was able to figure out how to get mixed class segment pricing through the United online reservation system by choosing to get business class pricing versus economy pricing. With that selection, the flight choices automatically show both economy class and business class options for each segment, and allows you to choose which fares you want for each flight segment.
Choosing business class for only the overnight flight segment, and economy class for all of the other flights, including the return flights, only added about $540 per person to the total airfare, resulting in a total ticket price of about $1,940 per person.
This did not seem too bad of a price to include the comfort of more room, better sleeping ability with fully reclining seats, better meal service and drinks included. If one was forced to choose business class across all flights, the total ticket price is about $3,900 per person, and some of the flights are not even business class, specifically the connecting flights into and out of Columbia, SC.
After even further investigation into the various cabin classes on the United flights we were looking at, I also discovered a cabin class on United called Premium Plus that is between Economy + and Business Class. There are only a few rows of this cabin class on our flights, specifically the long duration flights across the Atlantic. The seat arrangement is 2-2-2 instead of the 3-3-3 in economy. The seats are more spacious and have more legroom, and they recline to near flat. There also may be other perks that we have not discovered yet.
We are still trying to make a decision on the exact class of seating we would like to have for the two longest flights, overnight to Europe and then the daytime flight back to the US. All of the other shorter flights will be in economy, they are too short to spend additional money on and some of the short flights don’t really even have a legitimate first class.
It is also dependent on which days we fly, some days around our tentative dates have better seat availability on some of the flight choices. We are also trying to fully understands the rules if we have to cancel this trip or delay it again for Covid. Currently, the change fees are being waived, but if we choose another flight in the future that is less cost, we eat the difference. Of course, if the fare is higher, we pay the difference, not exactly “fare” but those are the rules. We have not yet looked into travel insurance, but I imagine that any cancellations due to Covid-19 are not covered since it is a “know event”, and travel insurance has never covered “known events” unless you purchase a more expensive “cancel for any reason” policy.