Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
British Airways is offering a two day sale on business class fares to London from select cities. Fares start at just $2015 round trip (but I’ll show you how to pay much less). Bookings must be made by October 16, 2015 (11:59 p.m. ET). Travel is valid November 16, 2015 through August 31, 2016 (with all travel completed by August 31, 2016) from select U.S. gateways to London on British Airways or American Airlines operated services, only.
How to find the fares
Go to: this BA web page to search for low fares. Note the dates of travel that work for you. Then…
Save $400 and maybe 10% more
UPDATE: The AARP discount appears to work beyond March 31 2016 despite the terms stated on the AARP website!
If your outbound travel begins by March 31, 2016, you can save $400 by joining AARP and clicking through from their website. If your flight concludes by December 31, you may also qualify for 10% off (update: you have to pick either the 10% off or the Avios discount. I would go for the Avios discount unless you don’t have enough Avios or transferable points).
For details, please see: How to save big on international British Airways, AA, and Iberia flights.
Use Avios for an additional discount
British Airways always offers an option to save a bit by spending Avios points, but it’s usually a bad deal. However, until October 19th, they’re running a promotion from/to select cities. During this promo, Avios are worth 2.5 times their normal value when used this way! Details can be found here.
US cities included in this Avios promotion include: Chicago, Dallas – Forth Worth, Houston, JFK, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newark, Philadelphia International, San Francisco International, and Washington.
Here’s a real fare I found by stacking the AARP discount and the Avios discount:
25,000 mile bonus!
Don’t forget about this AA/BA promo that should stack with the above deals if you fly by January 31 2016!
- To earn AA miles: Fly to Europe and earn up to 125,000 bonus miles
- To earn BA miles: Earn up to 125,000 bonus Avios
Make sure to register! Miles earned on this flight will more than make up for the Avios spent to save money.
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[…] Like many peeps, I got in on the fantastic British Airways business class fares to Europe. […]
[…] After that, readers found one deal after another that was even better. At 2:41 pm, MilesMath commented: […]
does the additional avios pts discount work for spain, lax-bcn/mad-lax? i only see that option if i choose lhr.
@jack,
Yes – I have done it. Make sure you’re selecting all BA metal though.
i realized avios option wasn’t coming up for multi-city fares. i was looking for lax-bcn mad-lax. if i searched for roundtrip single destination, i do see avios option.
Anyone else having issues with the AARP site? I click verify membership and a pop up opens but then just reloads the same page. I have a paid membership so I’m hoping this is just a glitch.
I’ve had problems since last night, and have never been able to click through to the payment screen using AARP discount or not, and multiple browsers. BA doesn’t appear to have a web support desk, and their phone assistance is not helpful (sales or customer relations). If I want these fares, I think I’ll have to book on aa.com, minus the AARP discount and the part-Avios option.
As far as I can tell, I believe that all of the deals for much less than $850 + 30K have dried up. Still, $850 + 30K is a great deal for international business class, especially since the flights will earn redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles.
Darn! I missed out! Thanks for the quick reply though, FrequentMiler!
Is there something weird with the site? When I search, for example, NYC to Barcelona for “7 nights” it displays $1,522 for several months. When I click into those months I don’t see any combination of prices that add up to $1,522. Instead the cheapest for each leg is around $900 something so the total ends up coming out to around $1,921 and change. Minus the $400 for AARP and minus $767~ for using 30,000 BA points and the total drops to $754 out of pocket cost, which isn’t that bad but I’m seeing everyone get on the “$300-$400” out of pocket cost train and I understand I’m supposed to be searching for the “under $2,000” round trip flights which the website is showing me as available but when I click into the months it just doesn’t show it…am I missing something? I have the same issue with NYC to LHR – the initial prices they show me as available for so and so month doesn’t match the prices available on the next screen when I select the flights.
Fantastic deal!! Thanks for the tip!
Booked (yesterday) DFW-MAD-DFW for Thanksgiving and Spring Break for $531+60,000 Avios (2 people) and another PHL-MAD-PHL for Summer for the same price as well… 6 Business class tickets for $1,593 and 180,000 Avios and I should earn at least half of the miles back…
Is the price u got excluding taxes? Taxes im showing adds another $1200 or so. Found flight but out of pocket is 3k for 2
So I can’t see how you getting $450 at checkout. From ORD-LON 1/8 to 1/15 found $661 outbound $951 inbound ($1612) but I think that is with the AARP discount. When I go to the next page it lets me deduct $767 for the 30k avios but I dont see an additional $400 AARP discount. Am I looking at something incorrectly. I do see the breakdown of Fare $438 but taxes $1173.55. Is that what your talking about when you say got a fare for less than $450
[…] Frequent Miler reports this deal should stack with British Airways transatlantic bonus promotion. You can earn 25,000 bonus British Airways Avios points for a round-trip Business Class flight (up to 125,000 points total) until January 31, 2016. But you have to register. […]
Jessica,
The transferred between Amex and BA is almost instantaneous.
Any idea how long it takes for Amex points to transfer?
Ok, spent a bunch of hours searching. Pretty sure there is no unicorn.
Thanks. I know this was a major time sop this afternoon. But, heck, I’m taking my wife to Rome in biz class for a couple hundred bucks, so it was worth it. Wish I had had more Avios as I would have booked a summer Europe trip (same price, you just didn’t get 25,000 Avios back), but it’s hard to do these crazy deals perfectly.
Anyone know if it’s possible to book this out of CLT or am I going to have to position? Trying to use Avios to lower price
I tried a bunch CLT, but I don’t think the avios redemption works for that. Only works for: Chicago,
Dallas, Houston, New York (JFK and EWR), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
[…] $450 to $850 deal! BA two day sale on round trip business class fares. Here’s how to pay as little… […]
7:10PM tonight.. July 2016 JFK-BCN-JFK $356 pp American metal
Remembered I had 40K orphaned Iberia Avios that came in handy for the backward transfer to BA Avios. Offset the sting of the AMEX MR –> BA Avios recent deval.
Did they just pull the cheapo summer biz class airfares to BCN? I was looking at a couple of them earlier today — trying to figure out how I could get my hands on more Avios points — and something like PHL-BCN was pricing at about $1000 before the Avios discount. Now it’s more like $1500.
@iaphx I just booked 25 minutes ago.. Pick the JFK-BCN direct on AA metal.. I purchased the first 4 revenue seats. Undesirable old 777 v1 angle-flats, might be looking to swap up but just wanted to quickly grab what I could find. I found space, signed up for the AARP and website account, transferred Iberia and MRs, then booked (the space was still there).. I chose to sacrifice quite a few MRs at poor transfer rates to preserve scarce URs
The JFK-BCN flights are now all pricing at 950+ each way..
Right — it seems like sometime in the past hour the cheapo summer BCN flights went “poof.”
I tried a bunch of different AA nonstops from PHL for next summer and didn’t see anything comparable.
But maybe there’s some cheapo city pair that’s still out there for summer. 🙂
Please let us know if you find the unicorn!
It seems like the AARP discount fluctuates in functioning. I lost LON earlier when it failed, then tried to book BCN (it was working) and got a system error. Now it’s not working again – shows “discounted” but price is same as nonAARP.
I just used 2 browsers to search BCN flights: one with the AARP discount and one without. The AARP code was taking off the $400 — but the fares are much higher than they were this afternoon. I thought this one might have had more legs than your typical mistake airfare, but I guess BA wasn’t happy selling lots of biz class seats at these ultra-low prices.