How to Book the World’s BEST First Class Flights With Points (Emirates, Singapore Suites & More)

Hey there points people! Today we are going to talk about how to book first class flights instead of just business class ones and what might be involved with booking some of the most aspirational first class flight deals that you ever see on the internet. So first of all, why would somebody want to do this? Well there is a huge difference between economy and business class. Mostly the lay flat seat. You'll generally get to eat with real fork so all the time they have real glassware. The catering is a lot better. You'll generally get lounge access if you are upgrading from economy to a business class experience. So some people wonder what is the difference between business class and a first class experience. Well for those of you who have not ever gotten to experience a first class international flight on points or on cash, I hope you get to one day because it's the next level of amazing. So some of the things that you might get, one is just convenience. Like in Hong Kong with cafe pacific, they have this first class check-in area and you just hand over your passport and everything and they do the paperwork for you. And this worth so much to me to not have to do paperwork on my own. Similar with if you book the residence with EddyHud, they will coordinate to do baggage pickup and airline check-in at your hotel. So let's say that you're staying at the park high at Abu Dhabi, they will send somebody to your hotel before your flight, do all of the check-in paperwork there, and then they'll pick you up in a private car, take you to the airport, shuttle you, through all of the security and everything, and then once you land at your destination, they have a chauffeur to pick you up there as well. So number one is that added convenience, whether they're picking you up with the Emre chauffeur or with La Première, they have the La Première Mercedes that can pick you up to or from your hotel in Paris as well. So convenience would be the first difference. The second main difference would be the quality of lounge experience. So there's already a wide range of experiences that you can get with lounges anyway. Some of them just have cold cuts where you can make yourself a sandwich and they don't really have hot food. Some of the nicer airline lounges will have a lot of hot food, great catering, all of that. But the first-class lounges, like the al-Safoel lounge in Doha, if you're flying Qatar first-class, it's so good. So it looks like a museum. First of all, they serve high tea. I had salmon and I think for dessert, there was like this canifa type of dessert and it was so good. I ordered the same thing for dinner as well. I specifically wanted like a 13-hour layover to just live in this first-class lounge. The Cathay Pacific first-class lounge in Hong Kong has a spa in there. I have never actually been able to get an appointment in there because it fills up so fast, but one of these days I'm going to get an appointment in their spa that's inside of the lounge. The Japan Airlines first-class lounge, they have made-to-order sushi. You can just have unlimited sushi brought to you. So the lounge experience for first-class is just a step above what you would normally find in a business-class lounge. And then of course there's the actual flight experience where with the Emirates A380 there's a shower on the plane. With Singapore sweets you have that double bed in the sky. With the Etihad residence it's three rooms. You have the bedroom and the bathroom and the living room and importantly it also comes with a lock. So the actual flight experience is fantastic as well. You generally will have a dedicated cabin crew member to attend to all of your needs and for those of you who are not allergic to caviar, like I am there's usually caviar and much nicer champagne as well. So those are just some reasons that people might want to go for the first-class experience which is completely about luxury versus business class which tends to be more about functionality, efficiency, business, getting some sleep on a flight before you have to land and maybe go to a meeting in Europe or something. But today we are going to talk about what does it take to actually book these incredible first-class flight experiences. So the first thing that you want to make note of is that there are very few routes that actually operate these really nice aspirational first-class flights. For example a lot of people will post photos or videos of themselves in Singapore suites. It is important to note that does not operate two or from the United States anymore. You used to be able to fly between JFK and Frankfurt back in the day. That's how I originally flew it but now if you want to experience Singapore suites you're probably going to have to fly between Singapore and somewhere else. So for our client bookings whenever somebody says they want to fly Singapore suites the most common route that we end up booking people on for this is going to be between Singapore and Sydney, Australia. If you are lucky enough to find saver space on this route it's about 98,000 Singapore airlines miles per person one way. Or more commonly if you're like I really just need to experience it and I don't have all the flexibility in the world you're looking at about 178,000 points book through Singapore per person one way to fly Singapore suites between Singapore and Sydney. If that's a lot of points and you're like I really just want some photos of myself in Singapore suites shorter routes like between Singapore and Shanghai or Delhi or Mumbai those can start at about 61.5,000 Singapore airline miles if you can find saver space. If you can't then you're looking at more like 112.5,000 Singapore airline miles which honestly is not too bad for just the photo experience and the quick experience of laying in a double bed trying out the different food, trying out the lobster thermidor and getting the pajamas and a medical kit. Another thing to mention with the routes sometimes there will be a route from the United States on a really nice aspirational flight deal but you are so much more likely to find points award space if you're willing to country hub outside of the United States like something on my bucket list is the any hot residence which I have booked for next roughly Valentine's Day. They do fly from New York over to Abu Dhabi on this route there's also a Toronto route but that is not what I booked. I booked Abu Dhabi over to Singapore because it was fewer points and there was just a lot more availability and both Abu Dhabi and Singapore have nice weather in January and February so if you want to fly some of these aspirational first class flight deals what you'll want to do is probably build a trip around it so I was like okay when can I actually fly this residence so I picked my date there booked Abu Dhabi into Singapore and then now I have to figure out how to get into Abu Dhabi now I have to figure out how to get home from Singapore so you piece the rest of the trip around that try to find some business class flights in between the US and Abu Dhabi probably what I ended up doing I think it was through Turkish Airlines and then on the way back we'll fly back some way with one of the Asian business class carriers but when you are prioritizing one of these aspirational flights usually that means you are prioritizing the aspirational flight and you're building everything else around that versus booking stuff chronologically and saying okay I would really like to fly the Emirates Game Changer on August 27 on this particular date it's really hard to conjure flight availability like that so if you really want to experience one of these it's best to set that as your main priority and if you'd like a full guide for how to find all of these different routes for airlines like ANA if you want to fly the sweet cafe Pacific first class Emirates first class on a lot of their fifth freedom routes outside of Dubai we've got Eddie Had the residents we've got Japan airlines Quantes first class Qatar first class and Singapore sweets I made a guide that has all of this information for you it has the routes and approximate pricing for all of these different airlines where you need to go to book the flights when you can use different tools to help you find availability versus when you can't and we also have a whole bunch of accompanying Instagram reviews and YouTube reviews for a lot of the ones that I've flown personally so if you're interested in that guide you just need to go to geo breeze travel comm slash first class and you can find it there all right next thing you need to know if you want to fly aspirational first class flights is that there's limited availability that you can find using different search tools a lot of this you're just going to have to do the hard way by hand some of them for example you can find on search tools like with ANA the sweet there is a specific section on seats dot arrow under tools where you can click on the ANA first class seat finder and it'll have it there other ones like cafe Pacific first class I have flown this first class product twice from Hong Kong to Los Angeles each time and both times I just had to search directly on cafe Pacific's website by hand because it doesn't really show up on seats dot arrow it wasn't showing up on Rome dot travel it wasn't showing up on a lot of the other tools that I use like points back there are some that are kind of a blend like with Emirates first class you can easily find business class on a lot of the search aggregator tools but if you wanted to find first class availability you might be able to do this on some search tools or you book business class and then upgrade which we'll talk about in just a bit but the most reliable way to find Emirates first class availability is if you log on specifically onto emrits.com not just with your own account perhaps but you'll need to log in with an account that has some kind of Emirates status so that it shows first class availability and I think this is something that's going to get more and more common with the aspirational first class flight deals so for example a lot premier with Air France you have to have at least platinum status or ultimate status with flying blue in order to find those fly deals on points I think Singapore Airlines very likely could do this with the Singapore suites going forward as well and so if you're looking to level up your status there is this new website that I've been checking out called getstatus.com it doesn't have Emirates on there specifically but it does have a rotating list of different airlines and hotel programs and other loyalty programs that you can sign up with to get some status and see what you can unlock through some different status matches or if you don't have access to an Emirates account that has some kind of status and you don't want to be clicking on Cathay Pacific's website every day trying to find first class availability and you maybe want to just outsource that to somebody else we might be able to help you feel free to book a free call with our team at geobreastravel.com/setcall to apply to be a client and we can walk you through whether or not our one-on-one services would be be a good fit for you. All right. Third thing that you need to to know if you want to fly on aspirational first class flights is to know your plane types. Not all first class is created equal. You can definitely attest to this if you've ever flown first class domestically in the United States or even like intra-Europe business class because not all business class is created equal either. Even with the nicer business class flights like with Emirates, you've got the B-Triple 7 versus the A380. You probably want the A380 if you want to take a shower on the plane because this is the double-decker one. So whenever you're looking for your different flights, online, make sure that you're checking what kind of aircraft you're looking at. And then also if you're like, "I'm not an avgeek so I don't know what any of these plane types are." I don't know what an A321 versus an A350 versus an A330 versus an A380. I don't know what any of that is. There's a great free tool called arrowloba.com where you can just search for the airline and then the plane model and it'll kind of show you what the seat configuration looks like. This gets even more granular as well because with Emirates you have the B-Triple 7, like the one that flies between New York and Athens, which technically has a first class product with no shower. And then there's also the really nice game changer product which is also a B-Triple 7. And this only flies select routes like from Chicago over to Dubai. And this is the super, super nice futuristic one where it was like designed by astronauts or something. So there's some more granularity in there as well. So if you really want to fly the nice best in the world, first class flight products, you have to do a little bit of research into being an advocate. And if you're like, I absolutely don't want to do that, I don't want to do that at all. You can check out our guide, gobreastravel.com/firstclass or you can book a call with us, gobreastravel.com/setcalls to see if we can help. And the last thing that you probably need to know if you want to fly these really nice, aspirational first class flight deals is it will probably cost you more than you expect. Not just in terms of time and effort and everything else that we're going to try to streamline for you in that first class guide, but also, in terms of just taxes and fees outlay for this. True, there are some that you can book for, very, very little cost, that Cathay Pacific first class flight that I've done. I think each time it was about 125,000 points in Cathay Pacific plus $125 in taxes and fees, which isn't terrible at all. I've flown Quantis first class between Dallas and Sydney. I think that was 110,000 points in very minimal taxes because I booked it with American Airlines miles, same with the Qatar first class flight that I booked between Bangkok and Doha, but some of them there's just no getting around the taxes and fees. Like the Etihad Residence, the way that you would need to book this is you have to find first class availability on the Etihad A380. And then when you are selecting your seat, you can pay extra to upgrade to the residence seat from first class. So all of that in total per person, you're looking at about 120,000 points in Etihad to book first class on the route that I booked, which was Abu Dhabi over to Singapore. You're looking at about $300 taxes and fees per person. And then if you just had one person flying and you wanted to upgrade to the residence, you're looking at about $1,500 to $2,000 USD to select your seat in the three-room residence. Now, if you are booking for two people, you're sharing the same residence so you don't have to pay that twice, but it's not just paying it once. I think we paid 2100 or 2200 to upgrade two people from the first class booking to the residence booking. So it's still too grand, which is not negligible, but also that flydeal is worth many more thousands of dollars past that. So a lot of these first class fly deals, if you were to just look at the retail value of it, easily over $10,000 for a lot of these flights, if you're like, it's not worth that much because I would never pay that much. That's not how pricing works. It's worth what somebody would pay for it and there are a lot of, I'm just gonna guess, oil tycoons who buy the residence all the time, somebody is paying $10,000 per flight for these things. So all of that to say, if you want to experience first class flight deals like the aspirational ones that you are seeing on Instagram all the time, it will probably involve a little bit more cash outlay than you are used to if you more so fly economy or business class and I don't have a good rule of thumb for how many points is worth it. Because with business class, I like to use the 10k rule up to 10,000 points per hour in a lay flat seat. So if it's eight hours between the US to Europe from whatever airport you're flying from, pay up to 80,000 points if you have some flexibility. If you have no flexibility, you might pay a little bit more than that. My rule is 5k, if you're doing economy, 5,000 points per hour in economy over the ocean. With first class, I really don't have a rule like that 'cause they come up so rarely that it's more of a question of is this a once in a lifetime thing that you want to really experience this particular first class flight and is there some saver space where the internet or a Facebook group or your point's consultant or somebody says this is a good price if you really, really want to experience it, this is probably the best price that you're gonna find and go ahead and book it. I hope those tips were helpful for you. Let me know in the comments which aspirational first class flight you are most excited to try. Again, if you are interested in our guide, check out geobreastravel.com/firstclass. We put a guide with all of this information and all of the routes, expected pricing for the top 10 or so most aspirational first class flights in the world. It's about a 50 page guide, it's got tutorials in there, links to all of the AeroLopa seat maps so you don't have to look up the configurations for all of these different planes. We tell you which planes you'll need. All of that is in the guide at geobreastravel.com/firstclass. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)