Why is business class so bloody expensive?

[ribenita]

I know that you can get great deals occasionally, especially through upgrades point etc.

I looked at a flight that I'll be booking soon and it was £350 in economy, and then £3200 in Business! That's a ridiculous difference. Surely it is not worth nine times the cost!

Is this because it is usually funded by businesses, and so airlines know they can jack the price up?

Yup. The clue is in the name. Most people in business class are not paying for their own ticket and there is little incentive/need for airlines to reduce the price. They can fill the seats at that price, so they do.

Probably to keep it clear of little kids who can't behave.

Because it keeps the riff-raff out.

I say that as one of the riff-raff.

Check different airports, we used to fly economy out of LGW to Malaga with BA, one year my DH put the wrong criteria into the search box and it threw up all the London airports, we discovered we could fly Club from Stansted for less than economy out of Gatwick.

We now fly from Stansted.

The economy ticket is probably heavily discounted at the moment - for European flights business class is about 2.5x the price of economy but includes luggage and food plus you get your bag offfirst!

Business flights vary in price quite a lot. It depends on where you are going and when. Like every other flight, search dates, times and as far ahead as you can. We’ve never paid over £3000 for business. Ususlly about half that with BA. You can also try and upgrade with Avios.,

Do BA fly from Standted?

We fly business class once a year with BA. We book premium economy and then upgrade with avios. I play the credit card sign ups/referrals in order to save enough avios to do this. I've never paid stupid money for business.

Hi @ribenita, Business class flight prices vary by route, level of competition, timing and demand.
If you're booking on an online site, you'll typically be faced with higher fares than booking with a specialist who has access to Galileo, Sabre, etc - the airline systems that sit behind the pricing model.
You can see the different classes of business class fares and also compare on different airlines with more detail, so it depends on when and where.