[throwaway2037]

    > I'm someone who would happily pay up for a lie-flat more frequently if it was priced at 2-3x a regular ticket rather than 5x+.

Can you give a city pair where economy->business upgrade costs 5x? The industry standard is about 4x for direct flights and slights less for flights with a single stopover, e.g., fly Hongkong to London with a Middle East carrier.

[MForster]

MUC -> SFO direct for 10 days in August: consistently 682$ in economy. Nothing under 5k$ in business, some days considerably more expensive.

[throwaway2037]

I confirm it on Google flights. Wild. Lufthansa and United should add more business class seats on those flights! What is the primary demand for these biz class seats between these cities? Are big auto manufs flying to Silicon Valley to meet with tech companies?

[MForster]

I suspect it's more the tech companies themselves. For example, Google has a sizable office in Munich. I'm not sure if BMW would let most of their employees travel business class...

[tristor]

Companies really ought to pay for business class on transatlantic and transoceanic flights because of well-founded research showing that a seated position without movement for long periods of time creates a risk for DVT/stroke and that it interrupts sleep which has poor health effects. Unfortunately there's no legal mandate to require it, but a lot of European companies have rules for flights where a single leg is over 6 hours or over 8 hours that triggers an allowance for business class. I'm unsure about BMW, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do this.