(EXPIRED) Wide open biz class to Europe for 50K miles each way

Delta is offering a flash sale on business class awards to Europe from 128K Delta SkyMiles round trip. If you’ve got a bunch of SkyMiles, that might be a good way to use them. However, if you’d be transferring from Membership Rewards, don’t book with Delta. Save yourself 28K points and book these with Virgin Atlantic for 50K each way. Note that while the Delta flash sale says it is valid for travel from August 7-Sept 5th, I’m seeing tons of July availability as well — great for summer vacation trips. Remember that Virgin is an Amex Transfer Partner, Chase Transfer Partner, and Citi Transfer Partner so it’s incredibly easy to put together the miles for an award.

The Deal

• Delta flash sale on business class flights to Europe from 128K SkyMiles. Many of those seats are alternatively bookable via Virgin Atlantic for just 50K miles each way
• Direct link to Delta Flash Sale info
• Direct link to Virgin Atlantic to search for 50K pricing

Key Details

• Delta says the flash sale is valid for flights from August 7 – Sept 5, but there appears to be availability from late June into early September
• Delta flash sale is valid for 2 days (book by March 1st)

Quick Thoughts

I first saw the Delta flash sale on Miles to Memories tonight and I thought to myself that we should probably call this the “don’t book with Delta flash sale”, though if you want to book online, you might have to settle for Delta on some routes. That’s because the lovely Virgin Atlantic website doesn’t realize airports exist in such quaint regional locations as Frankfurt, Berlin, Madrid, or Brussels. Hopefully, Virgin will fix that one day. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for New York to Paris for 50K miles almost any day you like in the middle of summer. Poor you.

Of course, you should be able to call Virgin Atlantic for those airports which aren’t represented on the website. It obviously won’t be as fast as searching online, but I generally find Virgin Atlantic agents to be among the most competent phone agents around (except for the times when they aren’t).

To see just Delta One availability on nonstop flights, be sure to pick “upper class” and “direct only” out of the respective drop-downs.

Plenty of routes are widely available. Here’s Atlanta to Dusselforf in August 2019.

Delta lists the following city pairs in its flash sale. Those with airports coded into the Virgin Atlantic website should probably show up widely available for fewer miles via Virgin. Here is the chart provided by Delta with rates in SkyMiles. Again, search these same city pairs via Virgin Atlantic (those that show up via the Virgin Atlantic site — see this post for how to force the website to work for you, but accept the disappointment that some airports still don’t show up and you’ll have to call on those) and you should be able to book many of them for 50K each way (no need to book round trip with Virgin).

Also, keep in mind that flights to London incur $500+ in taxes/fees, whereas flights from other US airports to Europe incur $5.60 in taxes. Additionally, Virgin Atlantic charges more miles (57.5K) for travel to/from the UK during this time period.

As with all Delta flash sales, it’s possible that you’ll see good prices on other routes as well, so it’s worth checking your preferred route. Just keep in mind that Virgin will charge more for connecting itineraries, so you’ll pay more miles for a positioning flight (though it may still be a deal depending on the situation).

Overall, this looks like a nice deal for peak summer travel.

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