Dear Friend,

Last year we published a bunch of reports, and now I am offering eleven of them to you free. Have a quick scan of the titles:

• How to Fly First Class for the Price of Coach
• When You Can Get Business Class Tickets For Less Than the Price of Coach
• Top Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Win the Best Fares and Seats this Year
• Which Credit Cards Can Net You Free Tickets and Upgrades
• How to Get Upgraded Automatically, Without Even Asking for One -- My Favorite Upgrade Ploy

• When and Where to Buy Frequent Flyer Miles to Get in the Upgrade Game Overnight
• The Ultimate Mileage and Elite Strategy
• How to Get Free Stopovers and Side Trips
• How to Get Treated as an Elite Passenger Even If You Don’t Fly Very Much
• Three Sure-Fire Strategies for Upgrading from Business to First
• How to Fly to Hawaii for Free

Eleven reports? Free? Free, as in no obligation?

Well, not exactly.

This set of free reports is a blatant inducement to get you to subscribe to my newsletter, First Class Flyer. You get them when you subscribe. But let me stress:

You will be under no obligation whatsoever to stay subscribed. In fact, we will not even charge your credit card for 14 days. Anytime up until then, feel free to cancel your First Class Flyer subscription. Even if you change your mind up to 90 days later, just call me at the office (888) 980-9922 – or email me at Mr.Upgrade[at]firstclassflyer.com and I will reverse the automatic debit to your charge card. You will lose nothing, except the points you’d otherwise have earned.

Mind you, that’s one of the points of this inducement: I want to open your eyes to just how valuable points can be, in new and extraordinary ways, many of which are not written about in public places. And you don’t have to have many points accumulated, or even any points accumulated, to use points to get deals. There’s much more too, about how to get upgrades or deals so neat and sweet flying goes from being barely endurable to rather enjoyable. That’s why I’ve earned the title ‘Mr. Upgrade.’

Still, the deal is… you become a subscriber (even temporarily, with no money paid) and I’ll give you the eleven reports gratis. But you have to sign up.

Also, while I am being frank, these eleven free reports are – as declared at the outset – last year’s reports.

But they are rich with tips and strategies still well within their use-by date. Were you to pay me for this series (they originally cost over $197), and apply what they taught you, I think you would still end up profiting… handsomely.

So, with all confessed and off my chest, let me launch into the pitch (I used to be a pitcher of another kind, as you’ll see below):

Considering they are free, what have you to lose?

They also come with this month’s newsletter. Every month features articles on the latest premium class fare wars, little-known upgrade strategies, and loyalty program loopholes we uncover. And to reiterate: if you wish to cancel, please be my guest. First Class Flyer’s only future is satisfied subscribers, because they are the only ones who stay subscribed year after year. There are now over 17,000 subscribers. A recent survey showed that 22.3 percent will definitely renew their subscription and 41.8 percent will probably renew it. In the world of premium online publishing this is a very respectable result.

Back now to those eleven free reports.

They are mostly modest publications, but with mostly immodest titles. Some seem to promise the earth. Has our editor been overzealous?

Let’s take them one by one, and you can be the judge:


That’s a very big promise. There must be a catch, surely? Yup. This report doesn’t tell how you can fly First Class for the price of coach anywhere you choose, just how you can fly First Class for the price of coach to Hawaii.

But hey, Hawaii?

That’s where the soul and the spirit get replenished, isn’t it? Fly there in the luxury of First Class and you arrive already relaxed. Fly back First Class and you return relaxed. It’s those long-haul holiday flights where you benefit most from Not Being Human Cargo. This report tells you the airline which sells round-trip First Class tickets from Los Angeles to Hawaii to some people for $1,913 and yet sells the seats on the same planes to others for $716. That 63% saving is what economy can cost sometimes.


You know how when you learn the secret of a magic trick you are kind of disappointed? Especially those tricks that are so simple, so obvious, you’d prefer you hadn’t been told. Poof, the magic itself disappears. This is the same, sort of. But such is the saving, and such is the comfort of Business Class, I doubt anyone will dwell on the disappointment of retrospective obviousness.


Oh dear, sure-fire is one of those combined adjectives that can raise expectations to a perilously high level. Hype level, even. You know that if you are let down, thud, your ego will be bruised. On reflection, maybe we should have blue-pencilled sure-fire. It’s not that these ways aren’t genuine, but they do require you to adjust your attitude (that can be hard for some), and even do a little homework.


This can make you a card-carrying member of a very exclusive club: those who use their credit cards strategically and wisely. An art collection needs a coherent and disciplined theme. So too a card collection. This report presents you with three rules. Follow them religiously and you will be rewarded. This report also has our 2008 ranking of the cards that earn miles. You’ll learn which brand is okay. Which is better. Which is best.


As well as letting you in on my favorite upgrading ploy, I’ll also show you how to enjoy around twelve grand’s worth of First Class transatlantic comfort on a New York/LA flight for just $4,700. Or, if you prefer – and who wouldn’t? – for just $1,364 (the secret here is to buy miles; this report spells out who from and how).


Alaska, all of a sudden, became big news. Happily for us Alaska Airlines is still a well-kept secret. This airline is unique among US carriers, for reasons you will discover. You will also discover some gold nuggets, international award bargains through their partner airlines. If you promise not to tell anyone what this six-page report reveals – how anyone can reap Alaska Airlines mileage/loyalty program without ever flying Alaskan – it’s yours free.


Here, for members of American Airlines and Oneworld frequent-flyer programs, a little study is rewarded with a shrewd and lucrative strategy that reinforces the nothing-ventured-nothing-gained dictum. And the risk is more imagined than real. What will be asked of you is that you switch your frequent flyer allegiances and yet, strangely… keep flying with American.


This report takes the eyestrain print of stopovers, translates it into readable prose set in eye-friendly type, and presents you with stopportunities galore. What most find unfathomable, this report demystifies. If the world is your oyster, this is a nifty oyster knife.


Airlines are so keen to win new business they will do things you wouldn’t read about, except in this slim manual. Shame on them, you’ll think if you are already a loyal customer. Good on them, you’ll think if you are a new customer. Wooing newcomers at the expense of loyal customers is the way of this wonky world. (Might as well learn to live, and fly, with it.)


Uh oh, that hyphenated – hype-enated – adjective again. But if you know the right airline, the right route and the right loyalty program it is hard to go wrong. This report contains my favorite upgrade anomaly. With it you can get a First Class seat from the US to Europe that costs more than $11,000 for less than $2,000 plus 60,000 miles. Of course, a lot of people who fly First Class have so much money they could care less.


This loophole, for those who fly First Class from the east to the west coast, can be a lulu… a Honolulu… and far more rewarding than that pun. It’s a loophole that’s not perennially open, ah but when it is…


Perhaps now is a good time.

I am one of those lucky people who managed to turn his hobby into a career. My hobby’s not all that unusual, mind you – I’m just a collector.

What’s unusual is what I collect.

A philatelist collects stamps. An oologist collects birds eggs (even, it seems, in the name itself). A numismatist collects coins. Me, I’m– coining wildly here – an anomalist and loopologist. I collect anomalies and loopholes. I collect ambiguities too, and incongruities, and oversights. Even what might be mistakes. All in the one highly specialized area: commercial air travel.

Like most collectors I am undecided whether the greater thrill is in the discovery of ‘the find’ or in its display as part of an impressive collection. (The collection being First Class Flyer and the associated reports.)

This interest – compulsion, really – all started when I was a minor league pitcher for the Gulf Coast Royals. I’d organize the travel for the team and soon found I had the much sought-after knack of getting upgrades. I was an okay baseball pitcher but an all-star upgrader. Soon I was given the nickname Mr. Upgrade. I never got people upgraded by asking, let alone begging, I got us upgraded by digging. Discovering anomalies, loopholes, etc. that no one even knew existed.

And just as collectors of old bottles will dig in uninviting places (old outhouse holes, for example) to find their treasures, I dig into even more uninviting places. Among all that, yuk, fine print.

Yuk to you maybe, not to me.

I love tiny type. The smaller the better. Ultra-condensed type, tight set, designed so as to defy readership – such typographic travesties are music to my eyes. I just know they’re hiding something, and that I will find it.

So, I’m an aficionado of fine print, a connoisseur of the convoluted. Legalese? Yes, please. Terms and conditions? Can’t get enough of ‘em.


And when I’m not actually reading mumbo jumbo you may well find me in a jumbo, reclining. I spend a lot of time test piloting First Class seats. Seeing how far, exactly, each leans back; how wide, exactly, each is. Someone has to do it.

But none of this large-seat sampling is largesse. I am not one of those travel writers who’s wooed by airlines. Far from it. I don’t save airlines money, I cost them money.

So I generally have to pay my own way. But here’s the thing: I hardly ever pay full freight. If you see me in First, I’ll have bought a ticket but chances are it won’t have been a full-price First Class ticket.


Well, the short answer is just about everyone who subscribes. Reassuringly, a recent survey of 453 subscribers showed that nearly 2 in every 3 read all of every issue, with nearly 9 out of 10 reading more than half.

But who are our subscribers, what kind of people? Overwhelmingly, they are business owners, skilled professionals, top and senior management. They are people who fly more than most – 3 or more flights a year, for business or leisure. Half of those subscribers usually or always fly First or Business Class, the other half does so only sometimes or never.

My subscribers are seasoned, somewhat-worldly individuals. Less than 1% are under 30, and most are over 50. Virtually all have a higher than average household income. This newsletter clearly has appeal to people with life experience… successful people. Not too surprising given it is about taking an analytical, strategic approach to decision making – based on discovered insights.

For the majority, air travel is a commodity bought and used – to one degree or another – under sufferance. First Class Flyer subscribers see air travel as something not to be endured, but to be enjoyed.

Would you like to become one?

Fill out the box below or at the right and you can be. You’ll get your eleven free reports, and your first copy of First Class Flyer, and you’ll have 14 days before we debit your credit card so you can be sure that you have made the right decision. I’m so confident you’ll be happy joining, for 90 days, I’ll give you a 100% refund at anytime if you change your mind, for any reason, whatsoever.

If you are not sure, we will gladly not process your payment.

We really do want only satisfied subscribers.

See you up front,


Matthew J. Bennett
Mr.Upgrade[at]firstclassflyer.com