Assuming the prices are similar, which would you pick?
If strongly one or the other, how much price difference would it take to change your pick?
Lean business, but in addition to price, I could also be swayed by timings. Iād rather get into Paris in the morning, get some sunlight, and push myself hard for a day before crashing (and then likely waking up early-ish but not crazily so, and then being basically on local time) rather than getting in at night and having a harder time adjusting. Or, if itās a short trip, having a few extra hours there may be a meaningful percentage of your overall time in France, so that can be worth more than a fancier flight. Airline might make a difference, too. Iād look into how much nicer business is than economy for your airline, but on British Air on my recent trip to Switzerland, it was a pretty huge difference.
I voted for the nonstop flight, but with the caveats that:
Unless the Montreal layover is happening in the winter or during the middle of the night, I canāt see wanting to sit for 11 hours straight on the non-stop.
Pretty sure Suzzer is a giant, and business can include a lay down bed, substantially better food, and always having your wine topped up. Probably worth about $200-300 to me (also a giant), all else being equal, which is why I donāt often fly business unless someone else is paying, but there are a lot of factors going into international travel.
Iād pay about 30% more for the business class option in most cases.
Interestingly, if it were a mission critical work trip in a tight window I would be more likely to take the economy option to reduce the chance of trip delays and such.
One other thing to consider is if youāll have to go through customs and re-check your bag with the layover option. Iām not sure if that would be the case or not, but that could turn a 2 hr layover into a stressful nailbiter.
I donāt think thatās actually the case in Canada, although if you were doing an international-to-international connection thru the USA it would be. But he would have to go through immigration, which can be stressful.
Montreal to Paris is a pretty quick flight, which is suboptimal. The AC flight leaves Montreal at 9:25pm and gets into Paris at 10am, or 1am west coast time, which is pretty rough no matter what the seat is like.
There are several LAX-CDG flights, but I notice one on AF that leaves LAX at 9pm and arrives at CDG at 5pm. That is pretty much perfect, unless you have some plan for that first afternoon (which I recommend against). Eastbound transatlantic flights are never fun, but short ones are paradoxically worse than long ones.
I chose the direct option. Too much could happen when you have to reach a connecting flight. Might be interesting how full these planes LA to Paris usually are. When I flew Berlin to Montreal few years ago I had a full row of 3 seats for myself. On long flights I would chose aisle seats for myself anyway.
One more thing: If its an A380 from LA i take that option out of curiosity.
Iād try to fly on a 787 all else being equal. The larger windows, higher air pressure, and higher humidity are noticeably more comfortable, even if Boeingās been in the news for the wrong reasons lately.
I had a sub 1 hour layover (think it was 50 min) going Singapore > Seoul > Minneapolis. That was a bit of a nailbiter, we made it with 10-15 minutes to spare.
For the Southern California folks. This is on Avianca. Never heard of them, but assume theyāre a low cost carrier like frontier or spirit. @suzzer99
Thanks for posting. Avianca is Colombiaās state carrier. Absolute horror stories online but I took the risk and flew them within Colombia and then from Bogota to LAX. They were totally fine. I think itās one of those things where itās great if everything goes according to plan, but if a flight gets canceled or you need to change your itinerary it can get hairy.
Also they do their fares as S, M, L, XL, XXL. So those fares are certainly for S, which might not even allow a carry on.
Youāre right, forgot to post this as well:
How well are you fitting in Economy seats these days? My last trip home I upgraded because I knew I wasnāt fitting in economy seatsā¦
At similar prices, Iām not sure how this is a decision. Easily biz class for me.
Not great Bob.
Iām not any fatter, but Iām older, and my back does not like those seats for more than a few hours.
After anout 12 trips to Puerto Rico Iāve been mulling ways to spend more time thereā¦ been thinking about renting a house next winter ā¦ also looking at empty land for sale, run down houses ā¦ could I buy a boat and live on it? Just work from there some part of the year? ā¦ renting for a season seems like a safe next step after visiting over the years for shorter stints. But the idiot kid in me wants to buy some abandoned place and then ā¦ not sure what then, i have no construction skills ā¦
If you entertain that last thought any further, you may be interested in this guy on Youtube renovating two old stone cabins in the mountains of Italy. It may āscratch that itchā enough and give you some insight into the effort and tasks that may need to be completed. Obviously he isnāt in Puerto Rico and he had some constructions skills beforehand so itās not a perfect comparison, but hope it helps.
If this is a long term plan, you can probably start getting construction skills from community colleges or trade schools. Renting a boat for a season sounds really expensive but Iāve been watching too many 100k a week charter boat videos.
