If plan long enough ahead (~4-5 months) and you visit airline pages regular for short-lived special it is very often possible to get business class tickets for the price of economy class tickets (we fly regularly to Europe from the west coast)
Using points???
Using a mix of points and regular credit card, depending what we want to use at that time. You will be surprised how cheap business seats can go but these sales often last only 1-2 hours
We havenât used anything but points for international travel in more years than I can remember.
Depending on the airlines , different credit cards etc it often helps to be flexible what to use.
Nope. Points only and coach only. Your mileage obviously varies 
Yeah, if I could get a round trip business class ticket for 60k points. But I canât.
If you are willing to spend some time on planning there are ways to âgame the systemâ to get business class (and to a certain extend also first class) just with points through credit cards (and how to get them at which time (without ever using them and cancel them after a short period). There are a number of blogs who talk about some strategies which, based on own experience, can work (e.g. One Mile at a Time)
sorry, airline miles arenât worth gaming my credit score.
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Back in the day, I racked up tons of points with my old AmEx Delta business card. Double points on pretty much everything, plus I could attach my frequent flyer number to business trips â and I was living in a city with a Delta hub. Only time in my life I flew first & business class, and had lots of free or very cheap tickets. Those deals donât really exist anymore, and I donât live in a hub city, so⌠Southwest!
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I recommend reading about credit card scores, number of credit cards, what type of credit cards etc. Obviously you should only apply for very specific cards on a rare basis which depending on the number of credit cards you already have can help to increase.your crefit card score (and can get you a lot of points towards miles). In addition, you can cancel this cards soon after.
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Actually having card accounts open but with small or no balances improves oneâs credit score because of the âdebt to worth ratio.â But it takes discipline for a lot of people to do that.
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Completely agree
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Yes, but even with that disciplined approach your credit score still gets temporarily dinged after opening a new account. Also total number of open accounts can have a negative relation to credit score.
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Exactly, a 10% impact is from new credit is definitely enough to drop most people down a tier in credit worthiness. Here is the difference between tiers from another source http://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/2015/04/23/infographic-what-are-the-different-scoring-ranges/
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The link I provided said that âNew credit determines 10% of a FICO Scoreâ Not that your score will drop by 10%. But again I donât encourage people to take out credit of any kind that they canât/wonât manage well.
Airplane food please.
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So if itâs on NAF then anything goes but not otherwise?
The title suggests airplane food, hence the steer. Of course discussions veer, though in this case, trying to keep the thread around the original intent.
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I guess this thread was hijacked!!
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