I never understood the need to pay extra for getting on the plane first. I travel light and I couldn't care less about the overhead bins. Which would be the only valid reason to board early. And I'll gladly be on the plane last so I can minimize the amount of time I have to share farts with my fellow passengers. Airplanes are not very pleasant places to be. And the cattle herding that is boarding these days is very unpleasant.

I flew a few weeks ago (Lufthanse, Lisbon to Berlin). I found some seating near the gate (always in short supply) and I observed people starting to queue to board. Lufthansa uses groups to structure the boarding. Mine was group five, last in (perfect!). So I remained seated while people nervously started to queue long before the gate was open. In the end, it took another 40 minutes before I stood up and boarded. Some of the people queuing were in the same group as me so they just got told off by the ground staff and were kind of just waiting for their turn right until the end.

The most stupid thing is when the boarding turns out to be a bus ride to the plane. You get crammed into the bus with all the other passengers and then the last one in is the first one out into the plane. I've seen that happen on smaller flights. So, you get people paying extra to be first into the bus being out competed by people like me that just wait until the last moment. The bus won't leave until the bus is crammed full. And it generally has no or very little seating. Much better to be on the last bus.

I have flown "first class" on flights that turned out to be small airplanes and there was not much to the first class distinction, seats only slightly bigger, no special food, etc.

I'm confused a little by what you are saying, are you saying that there was first class boarding but you were not allowed to participate? was there a first class lounge with the name of your airline and you were not allowed to use it? etc.

It's a bit more tricky than that. Increasingly business and first class tickets have biz or first "lite" tickets that unbundle the seat from other benefits like lounge access and even seat selection or baggage fees. Also in the US, a lot of domestic airlines don't give you lounge access unless you're flying internationally. E.g. a first class ticket for United, American, and Delta a domestic first class ticket won't get you into the corresponding airline lounge. You'll need a club membership or to be flying on a first+ class (e.g. Polaris, Flagship, or D360) ticket to get into the lounge.

You can beat airlines. Mistake fares and fares sold below cost definitely exist, though they're a lot less common than they used to be as pricing models have improved. You're more likely to see them if you pay attention to off-season and new routes that aren't popular. Severe weather predictions and similar events can also create large price drops. I once got a $20 flight to Hawaii by simply buying just before a typhoon that didn't hit.

What airline?

Was it really interesting? To me, it has certain hallmarks of an AI-generated article. In particular, it introduces the same concept several times, in different sections. For example, fare classes, nested booking, and the SABRE system each get two different introductions.

The content seems legitimate, but I felt like my time was being wasted through at minimum a lack of editing.

I anecdotally find flight prices tend to follow a cosine wave. Starting high, dipping a couple months before, and shooting back up. You can see these sorts of trends on Google Flights which will show historical pricing for your search query.

And it can be helpful if you’re very flexible. If my dates are very strict then I’ll tend to book further in advance, whereas if I have a lot of wiggle room then I’ll wait it out.

I didn’t have that take. My understanding is the only time you’re guaranteed to have low-cost ticket availability is when the flight is initially allowing booking.

Later, as more tickets are sold they have more information about the flight and thus they may make adjustments to the ticket pricing. Either opening up more low-cost tickets that were sold at the beginning of the flight or reducing the number of low-cost tickets to meet high demand.

I worked for an airline fare pricing startup. The key to getting a lower fare is to not be flying for business.

Since airlines can't outright ask you if you're flying business, they'll instead offer tradeoffs that a business flier won't make. So plan in advance, but be flexible in trading off day-of-week or time-of-day.

The real answer is that it depends. With fare management, a small allocation of cheap tickets might be made available when the flight is listed (e.g. 350 days in advance) however more cheap tickets may be added or removed over time depending on how sales go when compared to airline projections.

Yeah I'm skeptical.

> It's standard practice for airlines to offer refunds or credits when prices drop after you book

Why would they do that? Unless there's some regulation forcing them to I can't imagine a company would willingly give up money like that, no matter how many hoops they make you jump through.