How to Get Cheap First-Class Tickets

Traveling first class is a dream for so many of us. The fancy food, the lie-flat seats, the complimentary pajamas – there's so much to love. However, the obscene price of jet-setting like an A-Lister makes it feel completely out of reach for all but the wealthiest of travelers. In reality, that's not the case.

There have never been more ways to get affordable flights, and I should know — I've been traveling first class for a while now, without spending a small fortune. Here are all of my top tips and tricks for getting that elite travel experience for a fraction of the price.

Build Your Frequent Flier Miles

One of the best ways to get cheap first-class tickets is by building up your frequent flier miles with your favorite airline. You can use these points for flight discounts, upgrades, free flights, elite airport lounges, and so much more.

It's worth noting that even if you're buying a first-class ticket with miles, you'll still have to pay for taxes and fees. These can still be quite expensive for first class, but it's still massively cheaper than the standard full cost of a first class fare.

There are plenty of great ways to build flier miles, so I'll list some of my favorites one by one.

Airline Group Flights

Pretty much every single airline is part of a larger group of partners. Some of the most famous groups are:

• One World
• Star Alliance
• Fortune Wings

Essentially, this means that you can accrue points with several different airlines and redeem those miles with one central airline loyalty program. For example, if you have a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club membership, you’ll also be earning points you can redeem at Delta, KLM, Air France, and more.

This completely opens up your miles-earning potential and means you're not locked into a single airline, which greatly boosts your reward potential.

Affiliate Shopping Portals

One of my personal favorite ways to build miles for cheaper first class tickets is through airline-affiliated shopping portals. United and Virgin Atlantic both have dedicated shopping portals that allow you to earn boosted miles per dollar spent at certain stores online.

This is a super simple way to maximize your miles earnings on everyday purchases. It also comes in really handy over the holidays when you're buying presents!

Hotel Collaborations

Much like with airline partners, certain flying programs have partner hotel brands like Marriott or Hilton. If you stay in any of these brands frequently, you could be boosting your points balance with every stay.

There are often point bonuses for certain hotel brands through the shopping portals as well, so you can stack your miles earning potential and get to first class even faster.

Elite Status

One of the most traditional ways to get cheap first-class tickets is to accrue elite status with an airline. This is basically a reward for continued loyalty with a single airline. Usually, there are tier levels for a certain number of miles flown or money spent in a single year.

Perks for elite status include priority for upgrades, discounted upgrades, and for higher elite statuses, even complimentary upgrades and companion tickets each year.

Some airlines allow you to permanently keep Gold or Platinum status levels, rather than losing it each year. However, this usually requires you to fly at least 75,000 to 100,000 miles in one year on one airline. Increasingly, airlines like British Airways are switching elite status earning from miles to cash spent, so check your airlines’ requirements before committing to status chasing.

Use Travel Reward Credit Cards

We can't talk about getting cheap first-class travel without mentioning travel reward credit cards. They're the most popular way of building frequent flier miles and achieving elite status for a reason.

Sign-up Bonuses

First things first — before you sign up for a new travel reward credit card, check for any sign-up or welcome bonuses. If they don't have any, shop around or wait it out because these are super important for building points quickly.

Usually, you'll get anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 points as a welcome bonus when you spend a certain amount in the first three months of having the card. For free or low-fee cards, the spending requirement can be as low as $1,000.

However, if you go for a higher annual fee-paying card, the bonuses only get bigger and better. I've seen cards offer 100,000 welcome points if you spend $6,000 in the first three months. If you have a big vacation, wedding, or home remodel coming up, you can easily hit that number.

The monetary value of 100,000 points will also more than likely make up for your annual fee that year. With higher annual fee cards, you'll also get boosted points per dollar spent and extra perks like lounge access, elite status, discounts, and even companion tickets.

Redemption Bonuses

If you use a non-branded or open reward card like American Express or Chase Sapphire, you might also be able to get redemption bonuses. As you transfer your main Amex or Chase points to your desired airline or retailer, you can sometimes get extra bonus points, meaning you don't have to spend as much.

These redemption bonuses are common, so sign up for your credit card’s email newsletter to be kept in the loop!

Co-Branded Vs. Open Reward Credit Cards

If you know you're going to be building points for a specific airline, you might want to opt for a co-branded card: Virgin Atlantic has a MasterCard co-brand, United has an American Express and Chase co-brand, and plenty of others do as well.

The benefits for those specific airlines tend to be boosted. This means that instead of earning one mile per dollar spent, you can earn up to five miles per dollar on airline tickets, purchases, and other affiliated spending categories. If you're a frequent flier or are booking travel a lot for other people, this may be well worth it.

Stacking Purchases

If you have a reward credit card, you often get extra points for buying flights or hotels. You can also purchase these flights or hotels through the shopping portals so that you get three opportunities for point bonuses.

For example, say you get 1x points for buying a United flight on their miles program at $500. If you buy it with your fee-paying United reward card, you can get 5x points extra. If you combine that bonus with the 3x bonus in United’s shopping portal, that $500 becomes 4,500 miles.

Reward Flight Finders

Unfortunately, our standard flight deal newsletters like Secret Flying, Going, and Jack's Flight Club don't have first-class deals very often. However, certain airlines have easy-to-use reward flight finders.

Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club flight finder has recently switched to dynamic points pricing rather than set rates per route. As such, they have “saver rates" across most routes and classes. I've seen transatlantic business class for as low as 15,000 points, and first class is on there, too.