AisleSeat,
I'm not familiar with the SEA market but from major California cities (LAX, SFO) you can frequently find discounted nonrefundable business class fares to Europe in the $2,000 to $2,500 range on a number of airlines. There are many restrictions to these fares some of which can be 50 day advance purchase, 7 day minumum stay, and fees for making any changes.

It's all seasonal - nobody sells $500 seats to Europe except in the slowest parts of the winter. Same goes for any business class sales, and they're never under $2K RT from Seattle, more like $2500-$3K. Even BA's World Traveler Plus "premium coach" is within a few lattes of a grand at the slow times.

Yes AAFrequent Flyer, I've been getting those free Business Class tickets for 90,000 miles and just confused it for a minute with the upgrade which is as you say.

Now that the upgrade costs $500 RT in addition to the 50,000 miles, I know I wont' be using that upgrade system. Especially since the 90,000 no cost ticket also allows an extra stopover each way -- something you can't do with the cheap purchase ticket to upgrade.

I've used miles to upgrade to business class, but never first class. And I had to buy a full unrestricted ticket (this is with United). Think it was about $1,100 from IAD to Belfast, via LHR, and 10,000 miles each way.

And for anyone who is interested in further FF discussions, there is a pretty good discussion board at www.flyertalk.com for the frequent fliers around the world. They have whole sections devoted to how to use your FF miles :D