British Airways is selling $1300 roundtrip business class tickets between Europe and the US, Verizon is giving up to $100 each to customers…and now you can book Hilton free night certificates via chat. All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to each article are embedded in the titles).
$1300 roundtrip European business class flights on British Airways
There’s more than one way to skin a business class flight, and this is one that I’ve been meaning to write about, as I booked it twice last month. British Airways can sometimes have great sales on business class cash fares from the US to Europe, but you can consistently find even better fares from Europe to the US. Usually the best fares are from Italy, Spain or a combination of the two…like the $1400-$1500 open jaw itineraries referred to in the linked Secret Flying post. These are widely available throughout much of next year and can be done from many different Spanish and Italian airports. By “nesting” the itinerary with a one-way award flight at each end, you can get some terrific value. My wife and I booked two of them: Milan – Seattle, Seattle – the Canary Islands and then Sicily – Seattle and Seattle back to Barcelona later in the year. By using the 35% premium class rebate on points redemptions from our Amex Business Platinum card, we were able to get eight one-way, transatlantic business class flights for ~42,000 Membership Rewards each. Even better, these are booked as cash fares, so by crediting them to Alaska Airlines we’ll earn ~35,000 elite-qualifying miles each and a total of ~100,000 redeemable miles. Wowza. If you can make use of at least two trips within a year to Europe, this can be a handy little tool to have in the toolbox.
Get up to $100 from Verizon class action settlement
There are many great mysteries in life, some which might even be unknowable. Where did we come from? What’s at the center of the universe? What should my cell phone bill be? Cell phone billing consistently competes with medical billing as the most obtuse, nonsensical, unpredictable set of numbers that we run our eyes across. My wife and I have had the same T-Mobile plan for years, but the combination of discounts, promos, surcharges, utility fees, administrative charges and taxes somehow never add up to the same amount from month to month. Turns out that, for Verizon anyway, some of that discrepancy was intentional. The company has just settled a class action lawsuit that claimed the ubiquitous cell service provider was adding additional fees to customer accounts that weren’t disclosed beforehand. Because of this consistently misleading tap dance, Verizon is endowing a fund with $100 million in order to pay affected customers up to $100 each (which probably covers about 2.2 months of misbilling). Many folks who were with Verizon between 2016 and the end of 2023 will be eligible. Danny the Deal Guru breaks down the application process in the post linked above.
Turkey drops e-visa requirements for the US and Canada
The FM Team has been spending more time in Turkey lately. Partially, that’s because of Turkish Airlines, which manages to combine good award availability, excellent pricing and a terrific business class product with the opportunity to stop over in the magical city of Istanbul for free. The one inconvenience with doing these short visits has been having to fork over $50 per person to the Turkish government for an eVisa before arriving. The process was easy and almost instantaneous, but the cost could add up quickly, as it did for Nick when he recently took his family of four on a whirlwind overnight tour of the city. Nick was unfortunately just a few days too soon as, at the end of 2023, the Turkish government announced that US and Canadian citizens would no longer be required to apply for an eVisa for stays of up to 90 days. Now there’s even less to stand between you, a marvelous city and some of the best food in the world.
PSA: You can book a Hilton Free Night Certificate via chat
On the one hand, Hilton free night certificates (that are part of the perks for the Amex Hilton Business, Aspire and Surpass cards) are some of the easiest to wrap your mind around. They can be used any day of the week at almost any Hilton property in the world, regardless of the points price of the hotel. The only requirement is that a standard room must be available. That said, the booking process has long been a pain-in-the-Conrad, since you had to call up and talk to a live agent, which almost always ended up being a painstaking 20-minute slog…and god help you if you had to book more than one property. At some point, Hilton made the process somewhat easier by adding the ability to book via chat. I discovered that accidentally last year and assumed that it had been that way for awhile. Turns out, if it was, nobody knew about it…Award Wallet posted the tip last week and a couple folks on the FM team hadn’t realized that it was possible. From my experience, booking via chat isn’t really much faster, but it certainly beats twiddling your thumbs while you wait on the phone.
Thanks for posting, Tim. Question – to get Amex 35% rebate, I have to book thru Amex Travel, correct? I’m not seeing the same flights listed there and they are more expensive.
Thanks
Yes, that’s correct, you do have to book the Amex.
However, I wouldn’t search through Amex initially. Instead, try to find availability and pricing that you want through Google flights and then enter that exact itinerary into Amex…it will be much easier to find dates/routes that work that way.
Occasionally there’s something that doesn’t show up on Amex but, with BA anyway, I’d estimate that 80-90% of the fares that I find on Google show up on Amex as well.
Tim, I’m finding many sub $2000USD round trips open jaws. Not quite $1300-1400. Still a great deal. And….a lot a lot of hidden city ticketing opportunities thru LHR. This is kinda amazing opportunity. The Bness Amex aspect is fun too. And…gotta love Alaska airlines miles. This is a winner.
Great! Yes, the prices seem to have gone up to more like $1700-$1800. It does fluctuate though, so it’s worth checking again later. Consistently, it seems like $1600-$1800 is possible to most major US cities and it frequently drops even lower (like it was earlier this week).
Also, it’s worth searching roundtrips from Spain and Italy as well. Usually, the open jaws are cheaper (I have no idea why), but occasionally the RT trips will actually drop below them.
Tim – Great post! Another noob here and to the whole travel hack community.
We can make the 2 trips to Europe happen for our family of 4 (2 teens). Trip 1 – July/Aug and then possibly Trip 2 – December (just for this deal to pan out). We are in NYC (can fly out of toronto if need be), have a basic BA loyalty (can register w/Alaska for this deal), have miles with Cap1 and Chase for some reference. Have accumulated enough miles as an award flight but it seems cash purchase seems to be the way to go.
Here is where I am – I see the flights for about €1,514 RT each. Additionally we will need to get One way tickets at both ends jfk-nap (or eu) and another one mad-jfk to make this work and these seem to be quite expensive (diluting the deal altogether).
I am trying to jump on this deal (as our 1st travel hack) and am not sure If I am doing this right. If possible would really appreciate some help and feedback on how to maximize this deal.
What do you mean by “by crediting them to Alaska Airlines we’ll earn ~35,000 elite-qualifying miles each and a total of ~100,000 redeemable miles.”?
Sorry I am a n00b here
First off, on this site, you don’t ever need to apologize for being a “noob.” I’m glad that you’re here now and willing to ask good questions!
Almost all airlines have partners and, when you fly them, you can choose to credit the flight to the airline you’re flying on or to one of its partners.
For instance, both AA and Alaska are partners with British Airways as part of the oneworld Alliance. When you fly BA, you can attach a BA frequent flyer number to the reservation and earn BA Avios, an AA frequent flyer number and earn AA miles or an Alaska Mileage Plan number and earn Alaska miles (there’s numerous other options as well).
Alaska is one of the best with BA, for two reasons: it awards miles on based on the length of the flight (as opposed to the cost of the flight) and because it has heavy bonuses for premium cabin travel. You can see the earning chart here.
Elite-qualifying miles (EQM) are what count towards elite status, as opposed to redeemable miles, which is what you use to actually book award flights. With discount BA business class, Alaska awards 150% of the total flight miles as EQMs. In this case, since the flight miles are ~23,500, the total EQMs, which count towards elite status on Alaska, will be ~35,000 each.
When it comes to redeemable miles that can be used for award tickets, Alaska awards 250% of the total miles flown on BA discount business class. 23,500 miles x 250% = ~58,000 redeemable miles each, or 116,000 miles total.
We’ll actually earn far more than that because we also have elite status with Alaska…but I left that out because it’s probably complex enough as it is for a one paragraph summary. 🙂
Thanks so much for the question…I’m sure you’re not the only one to have it and you’re helping everyone else out by being willing to ask it!
Tim how do you get eight one way tix? I count six maybe. I really don’t get the math here all along. This sounds like a great find that needs more in depth explanation. I’m not finding $1400 bness fares
Two passengers on two open-jaws:
2x Milan-LHR-Sea
(three week stop)
2x Sea-LHR-La Palma (Canary Islands)
(six week stop)
2x Sicily-LHR-Sea
(three month stop)
2x SEA-LHR-BCN (Barcelona)
Whoops, sorry Sam, I didn’t see the second part of your question initially. You’re right, I need to do a full post on this, but in the meantime, check out the linked Secret Flying post that this is meant to highlight. The key is to look for flights that start in Italy and end in Spain.
If I understand correctly, 8 one way tickets Tim is referring to are the award tickets to get them to Milan and Sicily, and then from La Palma and Barcelona.
A full post on this would be great!