>>>>You can still get decent deals if you book early enough - and there are other tricks you can do too. Every time Hawaiian Airlines what I do is see how full the plane is - and if it looks like there are going to be some empty seats in first class - I don't buy a first class ticket. Then - right at 24 hours before the flight - go to the website and change your seat from coach to first class and you get get the upgrade for only 99 bucks. The trick is to do it RIGHT AT the 24 hour mark - if you do it before then it costs a whole lot more money - and if you wait any longer than that all the first class seats are gone. I did the same thing with United Airlines before too - think the upgrade was 119 bucks with them.
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>>>>I wonder if all of the airlines do that. It sounds like a great idea except for the fact that Andy would divorce me if I messed out on getting the business first seats ;)
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>>>I don't know if they all do that or not - and of course the problem with all of this is you are taking a big chance on if there are any 1st class seats available at that time or not. What I do is couple times a day after I've booked I check the available seats - and if there were only a couple of seats left in first class then I go ahead and pay the full price. This works unless they sell a bunch of first class tickets all in one day or something - like I said you're taking a chance. In my case I go ahead and risk it because as much as I hate it - I can fly coach no problem. I'm really skinny so those stupid skinny seats don't bother me like they do a lot of adults. If I'm going to be on the plane from Honolulu to LAX for 6 or 7 hours though I'll splurge the $ - and I've had to do that a couple of times when flying from Honolulu to Las Vegas - for some reason those first class tickets from Hawaii to Vegas go real fast.
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>>We upgraded (with miles plus dollars) for our flight from LA to Honolulu, but there weren't any upgrades to had for the flight back from Maui to LA. We were truly amazed at how uncomfortable the seats were. We were in an exit row and I still couldn't open my ultrabook on the tray table to work. Plus, both the first class and the coach seats left us both with backaches. Glad American doesn't seem to use that plane model (Airbus 321 32B) on the flights we're normally on.
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>>Tamar
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>It has not to do with the plane model, but with the airline and how they equipped it with seats. I've been in one of the first 777's with nine seats in a row. Last time from SF they put 10 seats in a row. Horror....

Understood, which is why I mentioned the airline. The back issue was clearly something about the seats themselves. While I've had plenty of times in the past where the amount of space for the seat in a plane was inadequate, I've never had the seat itself be so uncomfortable before.

Tamar