Last Minute Airline Upgrades on Longer Flights

Flying is a necessary evil if you want to get from one place to another. The level of evil you must submit to, however, is directly proportional to the class of seating you have. First class seating on a long flight is simply heaven on earth.

First class. Ah.... People feeding you grapes and fanning you with big palm leaves. Okay, maybe not. Still first class is where you find seats made for the human body and stewardesses that don't act like French waiters. On a long flight, first class is where you want to be.

Make no mistake, flying these days is nearly as calming as a trip to the dentist. You don't want to go, but you know there is no avoiding it. From long security checks to late takeoffs to outright flight cancellations, it is enough to make anyone crabby.

As with many bad situations, there can be a silver lining found in the current joke that is known as the airline industry. What is it? The last minute upgrade. It is the stuff of legend and luxury. Pull it off and you will become that annoying person at the party that just can't shut up as you tell friends over and over how you flew back from some destination in the lap of luxury.

So, how exactly do you get a last minute upgrade? Simple. You ask for it. On domestic flights, your chances depend on the flight. Is it late at night, a full plane and so on? In general, you can expect to pull it off maybe 20 percent of the time. That 20 percent, however, will be well worth your Effort.

On international flights, the stakes are higher. They are on a plane from 8 to 25 hours, depending on where you're going to sit down. The difference between the sitting part or riding in first class resort. Well, you will be pleased to know that it is easier to upgrade to first class. For some reason, first class is seldom full, if it is a big city to big city like New York Flights to New York. Even then you have a good chance.

So, what are examples ofsuch upgrades? Here are a few I've pulled off. $75 to upgrade to first class on a flight from Paris to Los Angeles. $56 for Bangkok to Los Angeles, which is a very long flight with a stop in Japan. $90 for San Francisco to Seoul, Korea. $35 from Costa Rica to Houston.

Can you do this? Yes. Almost nobody asks for upgrades at the gate. The worst that can happen is they say no. The best is you are eating grapes in first class with a breeze from the palm leaves moving through you hair!

Best Last Minute Deal on Asia Flights - China Air LAX to BKK

I use to take China Air for many trips over to Asia especially Bangkok from LAX as Eva and China Air almost always had the best deals, however for the past few years I have been getting good rates on Star Alliance Partners, either with Asiana, which if you are going to Bangkok, routes through Pudong Airport in Inchon, or United going through Hong Kong & Saigon Vietnam.

At the last minute I had to make a change to my flight reservation and move it up 6 weeks, and when I called United to get my cheap flight changed on one leg, they wanted almost $100 more for the change than I paid for the whole round trip! So I hopped online to see what was available. The best deal that I could find to get to Bangkok at the last minute...China Air, which was the only game in town, everything else was a couple hundred dollars more on a one way ticket.

I remember that the thing that I really hated about the China Air flight schedule was that there was a 6 hour layover at Chiang Kai-shek Airport in Taipei, which is besides LAX in my opinion, the worst airport in the world, back in the day there was no internet and the food and drink was horrible, and to add insult to injury they were charging 5 star prices. I use to bring a pool mattress and an alarm clock and sleep on the terminal floor it was that bad. Well they have made some improvements to the airport, but thankfully the layover now is only 2 hours, which after a bathroom break and stretching your legs was an easy one to do.

On Cheap Bangkok flights I always have a problem sleeping in the cramped positions back in the sardine section, so I was surprised when I actually slept a lot of the flight to Bangkok do to the new chairs on the updated China Air 747 that they use from LAX to BKK, the new seats slide forward giving the felling, if not an actual increase in the angle of the recline, and it really felt much better.

The other thing that you will notice on this, again, the cheapest flight to Bangkok that I could find at the last minute deal, the Boeing aircraft was also equipped with a great entertainment system that had a large selection, probably at least 10 movies, and then lots of TV shows, as well as a very cool interactive map that you could manipulate, and you could even send text messages via SMS if you had a credit card or debit card with you.

The only thing that I would comment that was less than my expectations would be the food, it was good, but I was hungry soon after, to be fair they did have sandwiches and fresh fruit available, but on long flights I like to get myself into a food comma, which is usually when I will get a short cat nap in.

The other thing that I am noticing is that none of the international flights that I have been on in recent memory are offering OJ with the water when they come around the cabin. When I am in the big tube, I max out the vitamin C to hopefully ward off any nasty bugs that are confined, re-circulated and amplified in the small space of a pressurized air cabin. Along the same line, I would also like to see some sort of sanitizer wipe given out at the beginning of the flight, even leave them on the seats so that you can wipe down all the surfaces that you are likely to touch, like the TV screen, the tray table and the arm rests,

All in all for a really cheap flight last minute LAX to Bangkok, I would give China Air a 9 out of 10 experience and will look at using them again in the future.