=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/news/archive/2004/03/02/f= inancial0933EST0047.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, March 2, 2004 (AP) Are first-class airfares worth paying for? RON LIEBER, The Wall Street Journal (03-02) 06:33 PST (AP) -- How far must first-class airfares fall before people decide it's actually worth it to pay to sit in the front seats? In recent weeks, the nation's airlines have decided to find out. Alaska Air Group's Alaska Airlines kicked off the deals a couple of weeks ago by cutting some first-class fares to less than a third of what they cost a year ago. America West quickly introduced a new type of nonrefundable, advance-purchase ticket: First-class round-trips from New York to Los Angeles now are available for roughly $1,000. In the two weeks since the announcement, the airline's first-class sales jumped 130 percent from a year-earlier. All this is happening because carriers are getting tired of giving away their first-class seats to people who are using their elite status to upgrade. Fewer than 10 percent of domestic first-class seats are actually sold for money -- partly because they are so expensive. The average, one-way first-class fare in North America was a sky-high $775 in the fourth quarter of last year, according to American Express's corporate travel division. With the airlines fighting for every dollar, they have decided that they have nothing to lose by lowering fares to see if more people will pay money for a confirmed seat rather than buying in coach and praying for an upgrade. Bigger carriers, including AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines, already are matching the price cuts on some routes. US Airways says it is matching other carriers' cheap first-class fares to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the low-cost carriers keep raising the stakes. ATA Airlines Inc. said last month it will add premium cabins in its planes by year end. Its plan: Cap domestic fares at $399 one way for coast-to-coast flights -- lower even than America West. Does "first class" still mean first class? Prices aren't the only thing being cut. Airlines have been dropping meals for first-class passengers on many domestic flights, and even space can get tight. There typically its only 10 percent to 20 percent more of it up there, compared with a coach seat. To assess whether and when it is worth forking over actual money to get out of steerage, we set out on a two-day, six-city, 18-hours-of-flight marathon. The trek took us from New York, to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and then back home. The first thing we learned is just how much prices have tumbled. With just a half-hour of shopping online, we were able to line up five one-way first-class tickets for a total of $2,022.50. We also quickly found out why most people weren't willing to pay the old inflated fares. We were served meals on only two of the five first-class flights. On AirTran, we had so little room in our seat up front that we couldn't work on a laptop computer. This problem is more common than one might think, particularly if the person in front of you reclines, since first-class seats lean back farther than coach seats. In fact, all of the first-class seats in our test actually provided less legroom than many emergency-exit-row seats in coach. Of course, first-class seats do have more width. But width doesn't affect whether you can open your laptop; in an exit-row seat, that is never an issue. Still, it's tough to book an exit row if you don't have elite status. So when is it worth paying extra money to sit up front? If you're flying overnight, the extra seatback recline can make a big difference in getting some shut-eye. It also may make sense if you're flying last-minute and the only coach seats left are stuck in the middle of a row somewhere. But making the decision based solely on whether dinner is served is always uneconomic, since you can generally pick up a fairly decent meal in the airport at relatively low cost. For some travelers, the decision is easy: Their corporate travel policy dictates when they can sit up front. But Richard Chan, a consultant from Queens, N.Y., and frequent flier whom we met on our final flight, suggests a simple formula when your own money is on the line. He says he would only pay 50 percent more than a reasonable coach fare for first class. Our own trip started with an early-morning America West flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Los Angeles International. It's a new route for America West, and it goes up against American, United, and Delta -- all of which had been in the habit of charging sky-high fares to the Hollywood types who frequent the route. We paid $507.60 for our one-way fare, including taxes and fees. Bigger airlines sometimes charge more than three times as much for a similar ticket, but they also still have some advantages. For one thing, our America West flight was on a narrow-body Airbus A319. The big guys fly widebody planes on the route, which cuts down on claustrophobia during six-hour flights such as these. America West served a sizeable fruit platter, plus granola and a croissant. We asked the flight attendant for one of the egg sandwiches on sale for $5 back in coach. While we did have to pay for it, we got the added bonus of having it heated up in the first-class oven. Next we hopped United from Los Angeles to San Francisco. At $407.10, it was the priciest flight on a miles-per-dollar basis, even though Alaska now travels the route in some cases at less than half that price. Once airborne, we were impressed when the flight attendant passed out business cards with a message from the captain: "Welcome aboard." Even though he misspelled our name, it's clear Capt. Mark J. Hitchcock isn't taking any passenger for granted these days. "A lot of flying these days is very impersonal, with people packed in like sardines," he said later. Next, we flew Alaska Airlines to Seattle on a dinner-hour flight. Price: $259.10. The big glitch here was, in fact, dinner. The counter agent said there would be no onboard meal, so we chowed on a burger, only to score a freebie chicken sandwich and pasta salad after takeoff. An Alaska spokesman said a recent revamp in catering may have caused the mixup. One day down, one to go. For relaxation, we took a dip in the outdoor po= ol at our hotel near the Seattle airport, despite the frosty weather. The next day: Vegas. We paid $178.10 to fly down on Southwest (which has no first-class). Unfortunately, Southwest had its old "lounge" style seating in the sought-after exit row, meaning two rows of three people face one other with their knees knocking. Since Southwest doesn't have assigned seating, a standoff ensued when a late-boarding mother and son couldn't find seats together. The flight attendants offered free drinks to passengers willing to swap. Our real reason for hitting Vegas was to try out AirTran's premium cabin on the next leg. It doesn't serve meals, even on the three-plus hour noontime flight we took from Las Vegas to Atlanta, for which we paid a modest $300.60. Its seats were the best of the bunch -- or the worst, depending on your needs. The seats recline very far, which is great for snoozing, but not so great if you're behind a napper. When this happened to us, we couldn't open our tray, let alone work on a laptop. A company spokesman said the seats aren't supposed to go back quite that far. The final leg of our marathon was a $548.10 flight from Atlanta to La Guardia on Delta, the most expensive fare we paid. It also was very pleasant and even old-school, with wide leather seats, doting flight attendants (and several rounds of drinks before takeoff). We felt like we were sitting in first class. ------=3D AIRLINE AND ROUTE: America West; John F. Kennedy International in New Yo= rk City to Los Angeles AIRFARE: $507.60 BEST PERK: Flight attendant did us a special favor and heated up our egg sandwich in the first-class oven. BIGGEST DRAWBACK: We had to pay $5 to get the sandwich after deciding th= at the free first-class fruit plate wasn't what we wanted. COMMENT: Best value, all told -- but we may have felt differently if, sa= y, we'd had someone in front of us reclining their seat. AIRLINE AND ROUTE: United; Los Angeles to San Francisco AIRFARE: $407.10 BEST PERK: The captain wrote everyone a personalized note thanking us for flying United. BIGGEST DRAWBACK: The tiny first-class cabin in our particular Airbus -- though they also fly bigger planes on the route. COMMENT: The worst deal on a cents-per-mile basis, and few amenities to make up for it. AIRLINE AND ROUTE: Alaska Airlines; San Francisco to Seattle AIRFARE: $259.10 BEST PERK: The small bottle of water waiting for each passenger on the seat. BIGGEST DRAWBACK: Check-in agent was wrong about whether a meal would be served. COMMENT: Best short flight we took. If only they flew them east of the Rockies, too. AIRLINE AND ROUTE: AirTran; Las Vegas to Atlanta AIRFARE: $300.60 BEST PERK: The seats lean back very far ... which makes it easier to res= t. BIGGEST DRAWBACK: The seats lean back very far ... making it tough to get any work done if you have a seat-leaner right in front of you. COMMENT: Would have been a winner on an overnight flight, but not when trying to crack open a laptop and be productive. AIRLINE AND ROUTE: Delta; Atlanta to La Guardia Airport in New York AIRFARE: $548.10 BEST PERK: The doting flight attendants quickly took our (ratty) jacket and hung it up nicely in the closet. BIGGEST DRAWBACK: Delta dims the cabin lights, making it tough to work. How about letting passengers vote on the light level? COMMENT: A pricey ticket, but the experience was suitably old-school: The leather seats, the wine -- even bigger walls between us and the poor souls in coach. Note: These are one-way first-class fares, with the exception of Southwest, which has no first class, and AirTran, which refers to its premium product as "business class." We purchased the tickets on Feb. 17 for travel Feb. 26 and Feb. 27. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2004 AP