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A New Service Wants to Help You Save Thousands on Business-Class Flights

Business Travel Airports + Flying
by Matthew Meltzer Nov 1, 2019

Beware the siren of the dirt-cheap international flight. Sure, that eye-grabbing $299 round-trip to Paris looks great, but those basic economy fares can sometimes mean riding 10 hours across the Atlantic wedged between two people who flop over the armrest. And now all that money you saved on airfare is going straight to your chiropractor.

This is why flying business class on international flights is especially wonderful. Food. Legroom. Unlimited wine. It’s also pretty expensive unless you can find an insane deal. Well, a new membership from Dollar Flight Club wants to make said deal-finding easy and will send those deals straight to your phone.

Dollar Flight Club’s new Premium Plus membership, which launches today, purports to save members thousands of dollars on international business-class tickets. Here’s how it works:

You sign up for a Premium Plus membership, which runs $99 a year, and enter your preferred airport for departure. Dollar Flight Club then aggregates large-scale data from the airlines and employs a team of flight-search experts to comb through all of it, filtering out for deals that have obscenely long layovers, then sends you email alerts or phone notifications when much-cheaper-than-usual deals come up.

You then follow the link to Google flights, see if the times work out, and next thing you know you’re getting a full night’s sleep on a lay-flat seat on your way to Amsterdam.

“At the end of the day, we’re saving you a lot of time,” says Dollar Flight Club’s CEO and Founder Jesse Neugarten. “It’s a lot of time searching for deals, keeping track of these prices for places you want to go. We parse through the data based on key indicators we think are really important, like the season you’d want to go.”

So, in effect, you’re not getting lured into a four-stop flight to London in the middle of February with a cheap fare.

The membership also includes deals on domestic and international economy fares if you so desire. And includes tips and tricks from Dollar Flight Club’s experts and discounts on other stuff once you’re at your destination.

The service launches today, and so far the deals they’ve found have been promising. A Newark to Nice business-class round-trip usually priced at $3,500 came up at just over $1,500 on TAP Air. San Francisco to Barcelona on United, usually about $3,800, was found for $1,800. Still not cheap, but a lot more manageable than twice your rent.

So while the cheap economy flight deals you see advertised might not always be the best experience, you can never go wrong flying business class. And if you’re willing to spend a little to save a lot, this might be the best $99 you spend all year.

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