How To Book Mixed Cabin Itineraries To Score A Deal On Premium Seats

Hey Lucky, awesome guide, thanks a lot!

Is there a 'rule' which airlines allow you to book mixed itineraries?

Which line refers to this possibility in fare rules?

In addition to Colombo, Cairo, and Milan, what are other cities known for low fares in business or first?

Airlines hate this and will screw the passenger if they get any whiff of what is going on. Even though this is hard to police, travel agencies are not supposed to do this either and can could lose their accreditation if the airline finds out.
I think you should emphasize a bit more the risk that is involved.

Can you ask for refund of your return flight taxes if you "miss" your flight?

@abracadrabra how is this risky? You can go on AA.com, e.g., and do this right on their website - biz on the outbound and economy on the return. I do it all the time. BA also allows this, right on their site.

Just curious, when was the last time you employed this tactic of flying in economy?

"lots of instances where people might want to splurge on business class in one direction and not the other."

Red eye to Europe w/ flat bed for sleeping + daytime return flight w/ Y or PE with extra leg room seats for just sitting and watching movies = miles savings.

@Lucky: On AirItaly's website at this point it is not possible to book a one-way ticket, only a roundtrip for trips between the US and Italy. When you move the mouse's cursor over One Way, it is grayed out. I called AirItaly, they said that they are hoping to offer one way fares soon.

Asdf my thoughts exactly. Business to Europe overnight, easy economy Flight Home.

Excellent information that is very, very useful. I found a great option for a ticket I needed to buy to return to the US from the Mid East in September. I may need to actually call a travel agent because the Book with Matrix site doesn't seem to work in my case.

I agree, I have been flying UA biz from SFO to Europe, then UA PremEcon on the way back. While still not cheap, it is still cheaper than R/T biz when I'm not all that concerned with biz on the way back.

@Rico you can try but you also have to factor in change/cancellation fees and the possibly repricing the flight to base it on what was actually flown.

I'd rather just forget about it.

I found that American Airlines makes booking mixed cabins straightforward at AA.com. British Air too: www.ba.com. Most others, once you pick the outbound class, your committed.

Thanks so much for writing this all up: appreciate it!

@lucky This is a really useful item and I'm sure it will help a lot of people. Another application of this that might also help a lot of people is add-on journeys. Say you want to cross the Atlantic from Europe in business but you need an internal flight. Maybe, for example, you find a really competitive fare to New York or Chicago in business where there is a lot of competition but you need to tag on a two-hour internal flight. Suddenly the fare rockets up because the standard ticket search only shows onward journeys in First and you get penalised for that with a very high price when you'd be happy to do a couple of hours in economy. Well, you could just buy separate tickets in economy but you risk a missed connection, which could be especially expensive or inconvenient on the return trip. The better option is to carry out exactly the same time of search you used in your article except when you have found the fare you use a multi-leg search to pair up the components. It won't always work, as sometimes there won't be a fare with an economy add-on or the price for economy might still be excessive, but most times you will be able to continue on in economy without paying a high price for premium seats. Also, there's a much-increased chance of a free upgrade to a comfort or economy plus seat if you have just come off a long haul flight and ask nicely when you are travelling with the same airline, especially if you have status with the alliance.

Airline pricing is stupid

recently I flew YVR-PVG-BKK round trip which was cheaper than the exact same YVR-PVG flight

A round trip flight US-Europe (ex-US) is often vastly more expensive than the exact same flight that starts in Europe

I’ve bought first class tickets for $10 less than Economy (same flight)

And so on

i might position to Europe once then just start buying round trip tickets from there

Example... position to Paris one way
Have vacation

Then do round trip Paris to MSP
This will get me back to US
The MSP to Paris will book out a year, which I can use for the next vacation

Stupid

Thanks Lucky, I have a question regarding lounge access on mixed cabins on same day flights. Im flying BKK-HND-LAX on a Lifemiles award ticket. The BKK-HND portion is on Thai economy while the HND-LAX is on ANA First. Given this, will I have premium check-in and lounge access in BKK? Thanks for your help

Some airlines have a fairly significant "no-show" penalty clause written into their discounted tickets. Not sure how they bill it though.

@abracadabra

Don’t be speaking rubbish there now

Actually, this is how I got "hooked" on flying First Class.
With AA it is easy to book a return flight (as a treat) in 1st Class.
But unfortunately, now I am "hooked"
Now, I always just buy-n-fly 1st Class.
I find a million excuses to justify it ....
Get away from the riff-raff ... just buy the dang ticket ... "can't take it with you" 🙂

You say its alright to throw away ticketing and I generally think its fine though why do you never admit that you throw away ticket as if you don't I am still waiting for a Hong Kong airlines economy review

howcome lufthansas website wont allow mixed cabin simulation? so annoying as i want to fly business there and first on the return, but cant seem to do that online.

Useful & clear post! Danke!

I do this on domestic trips based on the day I'm flying. For example, I'll do my outbound in first if that flight is during the week, then the return in economy if I'm coming back on a Saturday evening. Saturday is the slowest travel day of the week so decent chance I'll have the middle seat next to me in economy go empty.

Another trick I've found when flying out of DC, since we have 3 airports. If I want to fly to Asia, often the cheapest J fares are on Air Canada via YYZ. But even there, I can save more by flying out of BWI since they don't offer business on BWI-YYZ, while they do on DCA-YYZ. I don't mind economy for that short hop -- it's the longer flight leg where I want business class. (I think AC may have just started offering business on their BWI-YYZ flights, so maybe this no longer works).

You are a genius. Thank you so much for this awesome guide!

This is quite insightful for many travelers really willing to look for deals.

Lucky, this one a real thing. Thanks!

Thanks for a well written article with practical examples. I'll be using your tips for upcoming trips. Cheers.

Kayak allows you to do this as well when search for multi-stop flights.

Just followed your advice for a trip in Business from ICN to SYD. Cost halved when I added a return in Econ. Amazing.

Can/will an airline really retroactively bill you for the actual itinerary flown if you throw a segment away? Do they really have any legs to stand on from a legal standpoint and would it hold up in a chargeback dispute?

Well, I wanted to do this and fly BA1 from LCY to JFK and back in economy on BA/AA. The prices used to be around 1400 USD for this...cant find anything close to this deal nowadays. Any tips how to mix the BA1? I was always looking for starting point at LCY, never worked out for EDI, GLA, TXL....

I can see how airlines would allow mixed cabin redemptions if the first one-way flight is in economy and then the return is in the premium cabin. When it's done the other way (premium cabin and then economy), then I can see a lot of people taking advantage of this and simply not take the return flight. I agree though that it really depends on one's comfort level.

I don't get the reason not to take the return flight? When do you return? If you do return, but book elsewhere, there's the money you would have used. If it's a long flight, who wants to return economy? Plus, I don't see where most of the US carriers allow this.

There is handy tool to actually book ita matrix itenaries: https://bookwithmatrix.com/
(I am not affiliated with this site in any way, I just want to help my fellow mile enthusiasts!)

Thank you. Great tutorial. It's easy on some sites like AA but others it's not so intuitive. This work around will come in handy.

Ben, what kind of program is that? Thanks

@ Chris K -- That's ExpertFlyer.

I found an example of where this is not the cheapest ticket. I was looking a return ticket BRU-SFO. The cheapest all business was air canada over YYZ and EI was $4700(!) over DUB and yet, going economy and returning business (red eye to sleep), EI was a couple $100's cheaper. Around end of March 2020 to Mid april 2020. We had the exact dates in mind so we could have just used Kayak. Sure would be nice for Kayak to offer flexible search in combination of mixed cabins so this workaround wouldn't be needed

Hi,

I was wondering if any body could help me? I'm looking to fly to BKK around the 16th or 20th of January 2020 from OSL or AMS. I've tried the process of which is described here and when i put in the airline code QR it returns saying that there is no flights for that day. When I return the same search with no codes, it shows up flights. I honestly do not know where i'm going wrong?

Does anybody have an idea to help me please? If you could email me at:/

[email protected]

i would really appreciate it.

thanks.

Took me ages to establish that one has to click on Advance controls before the outward route codes pops up. I then typed in the f bc=i code, pressed enter, and that resulted in zero flights available. Prior to doing that. I received a full schedule of available flights!! Mmmm. Not working for me unfortunately.

I often travel on multileg journeys (example:
AA: YVR-LAX-JFK-MAD and RT
I tried to use your trick, and it worked... somewhat. namely it would picked up only the first leg as business, and the rest in economy - while I wanted both long hauls in busines and short flight in E.
I tried to outsmart the system and used "multicity" inputing my requested classes for each segment, alas ita matrix stubbornly returned B/E/E and E/E/B no matter how I split the journey.
Any hints?
(and I tried writing F bc=i|bc=d|bc=j, etc.) Nada.

Is it possible to do this on each way on a round trip?
example: MCI-DFW-PUJ
MCI-DFW is about 2 hours
DFW-PUJ is about 5 hours
Can you book the short trip in main cabin and the long trip in business