We’ve increasingly seen airlines offer more discounted premium cabin fares. Rather than offering free upgrades, they’d rather sell the tickets, even if they’re at steep discounts.
Lufthansa and Swiss seem to offer discounted first class fares more than ever before, and typically they do this by offering a “partner sale,” where you get a great fare if two or more people are traveling together, and if you stay at your destination for at least a week (or so). This is a smart way for them to better segment the market, since business travelers (who may have a higher willingness to pay) wouldn’t typically meet those requirements.
Anyway, at the moment Lufthansa and Swiss have some incredibly low first class fares for travel from London to both Delhi and Mumbai. The general terms of these fares are as follows:
- Only valid when traveling in parties of two
- There’s a six day minimum stay required
- Valid for tickets booked by September 3, 2018 (though in reality the sale could be pulled earlier)
- Valid for travel commencing between September 15, 2018, and June 30, 2019
Swiss first class
As you can see, this fare sale has wide open availability, given that you can travel over a period of over nine months.
So, just how good are these fares? You can fly roundtrip from London to either Delhi or Mumbai for just ~$1,940 per person.
Those aren’t the only cities available, though. You could also fly roundtrip from London to Shanghai for ~$2,250 per person.
Or you could fly roundtrip from London to Hong Kong for ~$2,580 per person.
These are some really great fares, especially when you consider that you often only see fares this good out of airports like Cairo, Athens, Istanbul, etc. To see fares like this out of London is unusual.
Best of all, availability is wide open, so you should have no trouble finding seats. You can search the availability on ITA Matrix, just make sure you’re searching for two passengers to trigger this pricing. Then you can book directly with either Lufthansa or Swiss.
Both Lufthansa and Swiss first class are excellent, and their lounges in Frankfurt, Munich, and Zurich, are exceptional, so be sure you plan a long layover to enjoy those.
Swiss first class lounge Zurich
These fares book into the “A” fare class (at least for the longhaul segments), so you can find mileage accrual rates here. With some programs you can earn as many as 300% miles.
It goes without saying that this is still a lot of cash, but seeing roundtrip longhaul international first class tickets for under $2,000 per person is still excellent.
Anyone considering taking advantage of these great fares?
(Tip of the hat to You Have Been Upgraded)
I get a great price in ITA Matrix but almost the double price in the Lufthansa webpage? Can a travelagent bypass this problem?
I have same issue as "Jacob L", this fare doesnt appear in any UK booking sites, even LH direct! but showing A cls available, is this offer for NON-UK pax only ? BTW Im checking HKG.
@Speedbird
It's mostly that the headline doesn't mention that it's a partner fare. I'm tired of getting excited just to click through and realize it's not something I can take advantage of.
Another Partner-Fare, again :-(
@Jacob L, a good travel agent can book it for you, or learn how to use bookwithmatrix or the ITA powertools on Flyertalk. You can google it for more details.
How do I book a flight that shows up on Matrix ITA? I am able to find dates from LHR to HKG in march, but not able to book it on lufthansa website.
@Zymm You hate the fact that other people are able to enjoy something you cannot? In fact, the issue here seems to be less with you not being able to enjoy these fares, but the people you know not being able to afford them
LHR/BHX to BOM is one I look at quite often and for those who travel alone the fares can still be fairly reasonable. Booked in July 2017 a christmas 2017 (19/12 - 30/12) in India was around £2.4k return. It was Lufthansa 747-8 there and a SWISS 777 return.
Having just checked similar dates for this year it comes to £3.7k. This is mostly due to the return journey only having First flex tickets left....
LHR/BHX to BOM is one I look at quite often and for those who travel alone the fares can still be fairly reasonable. Booked in July 2017 a christmas 2017 (19/12 - 30/12) in India was around £2.4k return. It was Lufthansa 747-8 there and a SWISS 777 return.
Having just checked similar dates for this year it comes to £3.7k. This is mostly due to the return journey only having First flex tickets left. If you were to book First Basic you get £2.7kish.
This might not be "cheap" but FRA to BOM is 8hr, which is longer than a flight to JFK but I'd guess it's cheaper than a business class flight to New York.
Can I book 2 and later cancel 1?
@ Domunicus -- You couldn't, that would cause the ticket to be repriced.
What does the Amex companion ticket mean?
Any chance this could be used with the Amex companion ticket ? That really puts this in phenomenal deal territory. And would Amex be able to book this and get the 35% rebate ?
@ Gaurav -- Sorry, which companion ticket are you referring to? If you're talking about the US Amex Platinum Card, here we now have the International Airfare Program, which offers a discount on some tickets originating in the US and Canada, so that wouldn't be available due to the departure point. I think the Amex Travel Portal should be able to price this out, though, so you could potentially use the 35% rebate.
I hate these fares. I'm not a business traveler, but I do most of my travel alone, and none of the people that I do occasionally travel with would be at all willing to pay for anything more than an economy ticket.
This looks good. Worth considering. Thanks
I’d love to, but the connection time in Zurich is only 1hr 5min, which isn’t exactly long to enjoy a first class lounge.
Always include the economy fares as well to highlight how good the v fares are.