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Update: Some of the benefits of the American Express Business Platinum card have expired since publication. Specifically, the 50% pay-with-points rebate is no longer available to new applicants. See our Best Offers page for full details of current offers.
As reported by Secret Flying, Virgin Atlantic has some incredible business class fares for their new route from San Francisco to Manchester, UK — starting as low as $1994 through agencies on Momondo or $2004 direct through Virgin Atlantic/Delta/OTA of your choice. That price is available from May through September. I also found some availability on Air France and KLM for under $2050. This would be a very good use of the American Express Business Platinum pay with points 50% rebate. Whether paying with points or cash, you could have a pretty comfortable in-flight experience for the 10+ hour journey on Virgin Atlantic.
Quick Pay with Points Recap
If you are an Amex Business Platinum cardholder looking to pay with points, this is a quick recap of the process:
First, you would need to have 200,386 points to pay for the flight. You will get half back a day or two after booking:
You would get back 100,193 points for a net cost of 100,193 Membership Rewards points. Greg has reported that starting today, you may additionally earn 4x points on the cost of the airfare. You can read more about why here. If correct, you would then earn approximately 8,000 points back from the paid airfare for a final net cost of about 92,193 Membership Rewards points. As these Z-class fares earn 150% mileage in a number of programs, you may earn about another 15,000 miles from the round trip flight (or about 21,000 miles if credited to Virgin Atlantic). It won’t get you to Necker Island by itself, but we all know you can get there with a little ingenuity.
Secret Flying has a list of example dates. Here are just a few examples — the fare is widely available via Google flights, though you’ll likely need to click on a departure date to see a list of $2,004 fares. They won’t be terribly hard to find. Here is the month of August:
Two examples — click the dates or images to go to Google Flights:
July 11-21 I even found Air France and KLM for about the same price — though the Air France flight to Paris is not in lie-flat seats. The KLM flight (or Virgin of course) are lie-flats.
If you don’t mind an angled-flat seat, you could have dinner and a night in Paris on the way and take the nonstop on Virgin on the way home for not much more:
If you go that route, I suggest making Eiffel Tower reservations online ahead of time and going up late to take in the city of lights.
As a reminder, you can find more information about the Business Platinum and many other great offers on our Best Offers page.
H/T: Secret Flying
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Grrr… why doesn’t this accrue miles on Alaska?
Any idea if these fares are good for RT Aug-Oct?
If you click one of the links to Google Flights in the post, you can just change the dates to what you’re looking for. I just checked a couple of August departure dates and I see RT returning in October on most dates at $2014 (some dates were $2036 or $2042). Here’s one example:
https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=MAN;d=2017-08-15;r=2017-10-13;sc=b
Just adjust the dates as you like.