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God Save the Points highlights an excellent business class airfare sale on British Airways that has many routes on sale for prices around $1800 round trip. If you have an AARP membership (which is cheap and a bit cheaper yet if you have the Chase Offer for AARP – remember that anyone of any age can join), you can save $200 off these fares, dropping them to the $1600s. Furthermore, you’ll earn a boatload of Alaska Mileage Plan miles if crediting the flights to Alaska. In most cases, the reduced fares are available at least through the end of 2021 and in some cases into 2022.
The Deal
- British Airways has a number of routes from the US to Europe on sale in the $1800’s round trip. Use the AARP discount to drop prices by $200.
Quick Thoughts
God Save the Points has a list of routes including examples like New York to Paris, Amsterdam, and Vienna, Chicago to Naples, Boston to Rome and more. Using Google Flights to explore for other deals, I also found New York to Porto for $1583.50 round trip (hard to get a good screen shot of the total, but see the amount by “Your booking today” under the credit card advertisement).
Unfortunately, in that example, you’d have to transit between Gatwick and Heathrow in both directions, which would quickly eat up savings. I also find it rather British Airways of them to add a $113 fee in each direction to select a seat in business class.
Still, in some situations this will be quite appealing with quite a few routes around $1800 before the AARP discount.
I have been a card-carrying AARP member for a couple of years now (mostly just to write about deals like this). There is no age restriction — anyone can join AARP.
A 1-year membership costs $12. After $8 back from the Chase Offer, you’d pay a net $4 — which is well worth it for the $200 discount if you’re going to book one of these fares.
For more on how to use the AARP discount, see Extreme Stacking British Airways, AA, and Iberia flights. Note that the AARP discount is only valid on flights operated by British Airways, so you’ll need to avoid those itineraries that are mixed with American, Iberia, and/or Finnair.
As noted above, you’ll also earn a boatload of Alaska miles on these fares. I didn’t double check the fare class, but I expect these are R or I business class fares, which means earning 250% mileage flown in redeemable miles before any elite bonuses.
That means the trip to Porto, which is one of the shortest possible itineraries to Europe, should earn more than 21,000 redeemable miles.
If you’re looking to book a trip to Europe, this could certainly be a relatively cheap way to do it. I’d recommend checking out the cancellation policy in case travel situations change in the coming months despite the fact that many destinations in Europe are now open for vaccinated travelers.
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Is this dead. Can’t duplicate nay to the suggestions
Can you credit to Alaska but upgrade to first using Avios?
There’s also the Amex Platinum discount on international biz class…not sure if that stacks with AARP discount
Well, that’s only on select airlines in select situations (“insider fares”). I haven’t checked any of these routes, but I would be surprised if they’d beat the $200 off for AARP (and since AARP requires clicking through the link from AARP, I don’t think there would be any way to stack that).
To get the Amex IAP (International Airline Program) discount (available to Amex Plat cardholders), you have to book via Amex (thus no stacking with AARP discount) which means you’re booking thru expedia as opposed to booking direct. It needs to be an international fare, in PE/Business/First, on an international airline (but Delta also qualifies), and the *itinerary* must originate in the USA. When fares are on-sale like like this, the IAP discount will only get you an additional 4~5% off. However, when fares are more ‘regularly’ priced, in my experience the IAP discount is around 8~12%.
Does it work one-way? Trying to get home to NY from Europe in early October or late September with a lap infant. Would using points to buy the fare through chase, etc be cheaper than transferring to a partner?
Looks like it’s a sale on cash fares, not award fares…although it couldn’t hurt to check on what the award prices are right now.
And to answer your first question, I’m not seeing the savings on one way flights from Europe during the same dates.
If you transfer Chase points to BA and book with them, you’ll pay somewhere in the range of 100-140K points for a US to Europe roundtrip. Unfortunately, you’ll pay very hefty fees as well ($800 to $1000 or more depending on where you’re flying to).
If you do as you’re thinking and book directly with UR points on the Chase portal at 1.5 cents per point (assuming you have the Sapphire Reserve) and you can find the $1.600 fare on the portal (you won’t get the AARP discount this way) you’d need a little over 100K points with no additional cash outlay. Plus, you’d earn points on the fare that you could credit to Alaska, or any other oneWorld partner. That’s clearly a better deal. It’s still a pretty good deal with the Chase Preferred as well.
With a little more hassle you could do slightly better — buy Visa / MC gift cards at a grocery store when they’re on “sale” (to avoid the fee), book the fare through AARP to get the discount, use the gift cards to pay, then pay yourself back using Chase UR points. That would bring you in slightly under 100K points with the Reserve card, however I would not want to try to deal with any kind of refund this way.
Give Anthony a job at FM
Amazing! I’m in Europe already and just need a one way-could I do this as well for 50k per person?
I doubt it because these discount fares often require round-trip to qualify. But since using Chase points it just cashing in for paid fares on their portal, just use their portal to check for flights around the time you want. If you see one for, say, $800, that would be 60K points or so. Doesn’t even have to be one of these OneWorld flights, and TAP often has discount business class fares.
If you travel frequently, you could book a round-trip to the US and back to Europe, with the return in the future when you need it. That might not work here if these sale fares require originating in the US.
Once again, it all comes back to searching on the Chase portal and seeing what you can find (or, if you’re purchasing and redeeming gift cards, you can search other booking engines and the airlines directly as well).