Pricing a September Round Trip (BKK-ORD) Business Class for 2

[ChiFlyer]

I am taking the Mrs to the US in September to meet my family and friends as well as take care of some personal business.

We got her tourist visa recently. I began pricing air tickets. I had not done this in a while. Looks like they have gotten sneakier about stuff. Big surprise. 😏

I am talking Business Class here. My 75 year old bones need this or else I am hobbled in recovery mode for 2 days. Basic pricing at this time seems to put these tickets for two into the $9,000 to $12,000 range. This is something I do about once every two years. It does represent 40% of the trip cost (for one month) now that I am buying for two.

I am a long standing One World guy, so I started out with the AA web site. I have been happy in the past using AA to book flights that were primarily on JAL metal. I like the BKK-HND-ORD route. The way over looks great. The return for some reason raises the price for 2 by $3,000. 😏There are ways around this by connecting through an additional US city. However most of these connection flights are on BA-737s. No Thanks. 

The connecting flights options also have some fine print saying that some of your flights will be in economy. Easy to miss this. This is especially true of NRT connections. The HND versions usually include a 10+ hour layover. Some of these options also include an HND-NRT transfer. I would prefer not to do that.

Qatar offers some decent options, but I think I would like to avoid the Middle East at this time. Plus I have read that Qatar likes to switch out planes at the last minute, possibly affecting your class of service.

One option that I found that looked interesting was Turkish Airlines. Excellent prices at this time. Comes in at about $9,000. I had looked at Turkish Airlines late in Covid, but they were cancelling a lot of flights at the time. Anyone used them recently? Also some of the options that I am looking at have a one hour connect time in IST. Is this doable?