Several airlines – including American Airlines, JetBlue, United, and Delta – are running fare sales at the moment. One potentially eye-catching option is the ability to book round trip business class tickets to Europe from only ~$2,500. It’s also possible to redeem points for good value on these routes courtesy of the 35% rebate on The Business American Express Platinum Card®.
The Deal
- Book round trip business class tickets to Europe from ~$2,500
Quick Thoughts
There are quite a few airlines with sub-$3,000 round trip fares in business class. Most of the routes originate on the east coast, but there are some good fares from Chicago available too.
The easiest way to find these deals initially is via Google Flights. Just enter an origination airport/area code (e.g. NYC), ‘Europe’ as the destination, select business class, the number of passengers, and leave the dates blank provided you have some semblance of flexibility with your travel dates.
On the results screen, you might then want to use some of the filtering options. If you want lie-flat business class, go to the ‘Airlines’ option and select Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance. When doing a broad search like this Google Flights doesn’t seem to let you exclude specific airlines, but using this method does at least seem to remove Icelandair and Azores Airlines from the search results. You can also filter by cost, number of stops, etc.
Some of the deals I found include round trip flights from New York to London for just under $3,000 with American Airlines, New York or Boston to Paris for $2,496 with JetBlue, and Chicago to Zurich for $2,948 with United. I didn’t initially notice sub-$3,000 fares on Delta, but there are some available through another route (more on that in a second).
Those are pretty good fares if paying cash, but there’s a way to redeem points for them too even if there’s no decently-priced award availability. That’s courtesy of the Amex Business Platinum’s 35% rebate for premium cabin bookings booked through Amex Travel when redeeming Membership Rewards points.
Amex made a negative change to this benefit earlier this year. In the past, you could redeem Membership Rewards for business and first class flight bookings with any airline through Amex Travel and get 35% of the points rebated afterwards. That more generous benefit was curtailed, so now you only get the rebate if the flight you book is on the airline which you selected for your airline fee credits. Airline options include American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, United, and more. If you’ve already partially used your airline fee credits for this year, you can’t change your airline selection. If you haven’t redeemed your credits, you can make a change; I believe it might also be possible to change your airline if you’ve fully redeemed those credits for this year, but YMMV on that.
Prices on Amex Travel are comparable to booking directly. For example, the $2,974 pricing on American Airlines mentioned earlier is available on Amex Travel.
As you can see, the initial round trip cost would be 297,423 Membership Rewards which is, admittedly, steep. However, your net cost would be 193,325 Membership Rewards after the 35% rebate if you have a Business Platinum and it has American Airlines selected for the airline fee credit. That’s just under 97,000 Membership Rewards each way which isn’t spectacular pricing when compared to standard business class award pricing available directly with some airline loyalty programs. That said, there are several key things that make this much better value than it initially appears.
One is that ~97,000 miles each way is the all-in price. There are no additional taxes and fees to pay which can often be substantial on regular award bookings, especially when flying in and out of London (although other European cities are available with these fare sales).
Another benefit is that even though you’d be booking with Membership Rewards, these are classed as revenue fares by airlines. That means you can earn miles for the flight booking; check Where To Credit to help you decide which program is the best one to credit to.
Along similar lines, these paid fares can also help you earn towards elite status. For example, the flight examples earlier could be credited to American Airlines to earn Loyalty Points in addition to AAdvantage miles, to Alaska Airlines to earn Elite Qualifying Miles in addition to Atmos points, etc.
This type of booking option can also be extremely useful when traveling as a larger family. It can often be hard to find more than one or two premium cabin awards when redeeming miles with an airline’s loyalty program. However, when booking through Amex Travel and redeeming Membership Rewards, it’s often possible to snag far more seats at that price.
For example, there are round trip flights bookable to Paris on JetBlue where more than two seats are available on many dates for less than $2,500. That makes the net price ~162,000 Membership Rewards round trip. Here’s Boston to Paris with three seats still available at this price…
…while New York to Paris has four seats available at this price on the date I searched.
I mentioned earlier that in some cases prices might be even cheaper than booking directly. That’s thanks to Amex’s International Airline Program which is available to Platinum and Business Platinum cardholders. That program sometimes offers lower premium fares, such as this round trip flight option from New York to Paris with Delta for only $2,792 or 279,203 Membership Rewards (181,482 Membership Rewards after the 35% rebate if Delta is your selected airline).
Something you might notice when searching is that some kind of US-based airline is listed, but the flight is operated by another airline. In these instances, you should still be eligible for the 35% rebate, even though the flight isn’t operated by your selected airline.
For example, there are six seats available on this flight from New York to Paris. It’s listed as Delta, but it’s operated by Air France.
Similarly, this round trip flight from New York to London is listed as American Airlines, but operated by British Airways. If you have American Airlines selected as your eligible airline, you should get the 35% back.
I’m not sure how long these premium fare sales will go on for; they may well end tonight seeing as it’s Black Friday today. It’d therefore be worth looking into your options if a trip to Europe is on the cards for you this year and you have a good stash of Membership Rewards points.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Anything at all from SFO?
Nothing that cheap when I’d taken a quick look for west coast options. I think there were maybe ~$3,300 fares.