nwflyboy
Contributor
My parents probably should be retired but aren't. You won't believe this, but I'm such a scrooge with my points....I have like 700K socked away with UA and Chase and when I do use the points, I always fly economy. My value meter goes off....I could do so many more trips in economy! Doh.
I have crossed my last ocean sitting back in coach (I'll go west coast to Hawaii in coach, but only on Alaska - they have decent coach seats). If I'm going to the other side of the world, I'm sitting up front and getting a good night's sleep on a flat bed. I have enough points banked to do that and am pretty good at making it work. Yeah, I could stretch those points much further sitting in the back, but 1) I have plenty and can get more, and 2) the last couple times I flew to the opposite side of the planet in coach, I arrived miserable, sick (literally in the bathroom for a day), exhausted, and it took me 2 days to recover. By sitting up front, I effectively extend my usable vacation time by 2-4 days and hit the ground happy and ready for action, so it's worth it to me. YMMV.
Gone are the days of 90K business class round trip tickets to Asia! Remember those? When I get older and everything hurts, I will probably be singing another song.....Front of the plane or nothing.
Well, 90K RT to Asia in J is not entirely gone, if you know where/how to look . Personally, I love that ANA Dreamliner up front, it's a really nice way to cross the Pacific. I've done that flight often enough that now it feels like a milk run to me. If you're based in the SF area, you have some great options to get to Asia (I'm in Seattle, so half the time my trips to that part of the world start with a hop to SFO or LAX).
And to steer things back to scuba-related...believe me, when you're headed for some remote flyspeck island in the South Pacific or backwoods Indonesia, flying for 24-36 hours to get there, it ain't nothin' to arrive there feeling at least half-human and ready to get on your live-aboard. Getting a nice seat up front (at least as far as Guam or Jakarta) can make all the difference.
But for short flights to Mexico, I do tough it out back in steerage with everyone else - no need to burn miles on those fairly short flights. On my upcoming trip to Coz, I'm flying Alaska+American to Mexico City (booked with Alaska points) and coming home on Alaska from CUN. I don't mind the bag drag to CUN, especially since it gets us a nonstop flight all the way from CUN home to SEA in reasonably comfortable Alaska seats.