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United Airlines currently has plenty of award space for the whole family on direct flights to Europe during summer 2017. Both economy and business class availability is strong from a variety of gateways, with some dates having as many as 8 saver-level business class seats available:
Chicago to Dublin, 4 seats (solid lines indicate economy saver award tickets and dots indicated business class space):
Newark to Paris, 4 seats:
Newark to Paris, 8 (!!!) seats:
Many other direct destinations are available including cities such as Amsterdam and Brussels, with connections onward throughout Europe as well. United charges 57.5k miles one-way in business class for these United-operated flights (versus 70k miles one-way on partner airlines). Remember that round-trip itineraries would qualify for the excursionist perk, meaning that you could add a free flight within Europe to a round trip award.
HT: Milecards
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While it’s nice to see award availability, I would submit that for many travelers, using ff miles to fly to Europe this summer isn’t a particularly good idea. If you monitor secretflying.com, you have probably noticed a great summer fare to Europe almost every day. I would say they’ve averaged under $400, and last week I personally bought summer tickets to Paris for less than $300. So why spend 60,000 miles, plus tax? It doesn’t make much sense, at least for many folks.
Very true that economy class airfares to much of the world have really dropped in the past year. I would agree that using miles for economy class to Europe wouldn’t be my choice, either. On the other hand, at 7-8 hours of flight time, some folks may prefer the comfort of business class enough to part with the miles (as cash business class fares on these routes can still be quite expensive in the summertime). This deal makes the most sense for a family/group that wants to travel together in business class as we don’t often see 4-8 business class seats on a single United flight in the summertime.
Agree. I was also planning to fly using FF pts but the cash price is ridiculously low right now. Even when compared to the (very poor-value) option of cashing in UR pts.
Will purchase instead.
If they are saver fares, we can use Aeroplan miles too, yes? For those of us with more Amex MRs than United miles or URs that would be great. I found some direct flights on United from ORD to DUB at Saver fares, but they didn’t all show up on Aeroplan.com. Enough flights did show up though that it would work – pretty much apples to apples, too – 60,000 miles + ~$48
You’re right that they certainly should be bookable via Aeroplan, though I believe Europe 1 (most of these flights) should be 55k Aeoroplan miles, no? A bit cheaper yet than United! Good point!