I am at the stage of my life where I weigh up the extra cost of a good seat vs my health. A bad seat can see me out of action with a bad neck and severe headaches for up to two days. I now often upgrade to Premium whenever I can, and take a full service airline over a budget one. It is well worth the lost days on either end if my health is impacted.

On my last trip to the US, I did the Qantas 'upgrade roulette' thing (they send an email to passengers a couple of days before the flight asking them to bid points and/or dollars to upgrade their seats). I bid the minimum points of 10,000 and the minimum dollar value of I think around $400. The system told me I had a 1% chance of getting the upgrade so I forgot about it. On the morning of the flight, I got an email from them saying I had been upgraded to Business class - worth normally $4000!

Having a lie-flat business class seat for the 14 hour SYD-LAX leg on the A380 was so good, I am considering only doing transatlantic flights in Premium or Business from now on.

If I were the airline,I would reserve some upgrades for people who have never flown business class before, regardless of their bid, to give them a taste of what they’re missing by spending less. I bet that bid system is tracked carefully to see how many bid winners subsequently pay up front for business class.

The bid thing is awesome I have received upgrades too. The airline would of course tell you your odds are 1% for $$$ reasons, buy for some routes, the minimum bid is all it takes. I fly CMB-DOH-AMS a lot, and the CMB route is pretty much guaranteed to get upgraded at minimum bid (~$100 that's well worth it).

This is exactly the conclusion I've come to. Fly economy and you'll waste 24 hours or more (both ways) just physically and mentally recovering from the flight. Put a monetary value on that and it's easy to justify the cost of upgrading.

I've only done business class on shorter flights, and if you have the money, I would definitely recommend it. To me, the extra space in premium as well worth it, and it's not as steep of a price increase versus business.

I agree with you on the full service airlines versus a budget one, to me, travel has always been a privilege and something I save up for. So I've never considered traveling on a budget to save costs.

Business class is far more worthwhile on long flights than short ones in my opinion. The reason is the lie flat seats make it so much easier to rest and sleep, and on short flights you don’t have time to sleep anyway.

It might be, but I can’t justify the price to myself at the moment.