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If the business class cost $100 more, I'd pay it, but it is not $100 more. There is a very substantial cost difference.
Everything about flying is miserable, starting with the parking lot, the long lines, the over-crowded terminals with bumping and shoving. The long distances to walk between gates. Babies screaming becasue the air pressure hurts their ears. The high priced and poor quality food. I paid $8 for a bottle of water at Chicago airport in the international airport; serious price gouging.
The line to get onto the plane, the long wait to get off of the plane, all of it is miserable. Some more leg room on the plane would make at least part of the journey more bearable, but I refuse to cough up the extra cash.
Yep, that's us exactly. Gets worse every year, and we travel LOTS. But like you, I'm not sure paying all that extra for a few hours luxury is a good return for money. So we put up with it until something better comes along.
We're trying out Business class for the first time in September. The flight is just long enough (9 hours+) so we'll see how we like it. I had one of the worse experiences flying ANA to Tokyo. It had nothing to do with the crew or the flight itself, but sitting in economy for 13 hours was brutal and I vowed to my wife if we ever went back we're doing business roundtrip even if it costs an arm and a leg. I could probably do Economy if it were less than 8 hours one way. That's a couple of movies, and two meals. No big deal.
I will fly coach on non-stops of 2 hours (or less) duration. Other than that, we now fly business or first class. I flew only economy until age 50, then decided I was worth the upgrade.
On expense report, for me, Asia trips are "Business class or I'm not going. You can fire me if you want."
I fly international out of Boston. I can get to London-Heathrow on a morning flight so I don't have to sleep in an airplane. I'm in Europe a lot. I only take that one BA flight and I'm bummed that American killed theirs at the Great Recession. As long as I'm in an aisle seat so I can get up and walk around, BOS-LHR as a day flight isn't any longer than BOS-LAX. I just check in to an airport hotel, walk over for Indian food, and force myself to go to sleep.
If I ever go to Asia on my own dime, I'll at least spend for premium economy which is similar to a domestic first class seat. A JAL Dreamliner/787 premium economy seat is 42" seat pitch and 19.2" seat width with power at the seat. A 13 1/2 hour flight in that seat won't kill me. There's no way I'm doing a flight like that in an economy seat.
When my lovely bride was living, we would fly first class unless it was a really short flight (<4 hours). She had some health issues that made it worth the $$. Now that I'm alone, I don't care so much.
I fly economy and will sacrifice my time /sleep to take a cheaper flight if available. For example, if I can save a few hundred dollars by taking a very early flight, I'll do it. Not to save ten bucks, but to save 300
I flew first class once, from LA to NY. It's nice. My then husband had all kinds of miles and deals.
I flew upgraded economy a few times on 6-8 hour international flights. If available, it's worth it - you get a little more room and a little more privacy.
My husband and I both do quite a bit of business travel. We both always fly business class and first class for vacations. We have a lot frequent flyer miles which comes in handy for pleasure travel.
I'll often spring for first/business class if the leg of the flight is more than about six-seven hours. Most of my flying is solo and I really dislike sleeping sardined up with a stranger, so it's worth it to me to pay for some extra personal space if we'll be in the air long enough that I'll want to get a good nap in, to arrive raring to go. I'm also tall and broad across the shoulders - back in the day economy seats were all right, but since they've started shaving off an inch of space here, an inch of space there, and packing in more passengers, it's just gotten too cramped.
When I travel for work they pay for tickets, but allow us to apply the miles to our own accounts, which adds up. And since I live in Alaska and everything is far away, I accumulate miles pretty quickly. So usually I have plenty of miles that I can use to defray the cost of upgrading.
When I was younger, I would tough it out in economy (I'm 6'6" (1.98M)) but now that I'm older and wealthier, I pay for the upgrade if it's more than a few hours in the air. I normally fly Kuwait to Dubai to Seattle and I buy economy for about $1500 and then upgrade to Business Class for an additional $2500....it changes the trip from pain to almost enjoyable.,
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. My then husband had all kinds of miles and deals. 
