How to fly Business Class (or above) for less.
HOW? – Simply put – rather than stating in the UK, start your trip in Europe. This is mainly due to the high airport taxes in the UK.
This does mean you have to get to your starting point in Europe first, BUT the cost could be less than half of starting in the UK.
For example in 2022, starting in Budapest ( we travelled out the night before, and had dinner and a good walk around Budapest) Business class flight to Hawaii came in at £2,000 per person.
Finding the flights can take a bit of digging, but there are dedicated forums to help with this, and one of the main benfits of this, and I am asuming OneWorld airlines here (BA, American, Qatar etc.. is that you get status quickly (Silver) which means Lounge Access and seat selection regardless of what class you are travelling in.
There are some caveats, you can’t miss any parts (or legs) of the trip, so you can’t buy the ticket and start in London, you have to complete the legs in order, or the rest of the trip will be cancelled ( standard conditions of carriage). However you could forget to take the last leg and walk off the aircraft in London, assuming you have hand luggage only.
The other option here is to have the last leg of the flight start from a different London airport, as if you arrive into say LHR (Heathrow), and contine from LGW (Gatwick) it is your responsibility to get the bags between airports.
Other considerations are how far in advance you need to buy the tickets, 180 and 60 day advance purchase are common, but the Hawaii flight mentioned above were 7 day advance purchase options.
Some useful links:
https://www.headforpoints.com/
To search for flights:
https://newmatrix.itasoftware.com/search
This is a complex tool, but once you get your head around it, you can go crazy with the search options, links below, will help.
ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search Consolidated Information and Help Thread
ITA-Matrix-PowerTools – Userscript for Orbitz/DL/UA/AA/BA/CZ/IB/LA/LH/LX/TK
you cannot buy flights directly from the website, but there are tools on the site which will pass the search on allowing you to buy the flights over he web. Or you call up the airline of choice and do it that way or use Google Flights below.
Worthly of note here is that if you are trying to use BA or American to book, the American booking website offers far more options than the BA one.