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Just a little while ago, we posted about an incredible deal to fly Brussels Airlines business class for just 25.5K miles from Brussels to New York (JFK). That availability is / was only showing up in that direction — from Brussels to New York. However, in my post about it, I mentioned that I had booked a separate way to Europe and I thought it was worth a highlight: I’m seeing plenty of summer 2023 availability for Air France business class to Europe at favorable rates. In fact, I was able to book my family of four for an average price of less than 50,000 miles per passenger one way (plus about $195 per passenger in fees).
The above price is about right for what Air France charges to Europe at the “saver” level, but this is notable since I’m seeing so many itineraries with multiple seats at this rate (even during peak summer dates).
Remember that children aged 2-11 years old get a 25% discount on long-haul redemptions (enter them as “Child 2-11” when searching rather than as an adult).
In my case, the total price for four passengers (two adults and two children) came to 197,750 miles and about $780. That works out to 56,500 miles per adult and 42,375 miles per child — on average, that’s fewer than 50K miles one way.
Surprisingly, this availability didn’t seem to be isolated. When searching for four passengers, I found flights available at this rate (197,750 miles for four passengers) frequently throughout the summer. Here’s an entire week’s worth of days that each have at least one flight with four seats.
One somewhat interesting thing about the trip to Brussels is that you may have noticed a screen shot above note that the trip would be “plane and train”. Believe it or not, this itinerary includes a flight on Air France from New York (JFK) to Paris (CDG) and then a train from the Paris airport to Brussels.
As you can see above, on the itinerary I chose, the train journey will only be about 1.5hrs. That’s not bad at all — and it saved me some money in taxes & fees over an itinerary that only included flights (but keep in mind that some train routes are longer/shorter than others).
Some of these same flights may also be available to book via Virgin Atlantic. While Virgin Atlantic charges marginally more miles for this redemption at 58,500 miles one way in business class, you may use fewer net points thanks to current point transfer bonuses (30% from Chase to Virgin Atlantic or 30% from Capital One to Virgin Red). If you’re transferring points to book, Virgin Atlantic might be the better way to book these seats when they are available to Virgin. To be clear, you’ll find a lot more availability on Air France’s own flights via Flying Blue at airfrance.us.
Overall, I’d say that it is worth a look at the Air France site, particularly if you booked some of that 25.5K business class space from Brussels to New York. In the end, between the two deals, I’ll have paid a total of just over 81K miles + $300 round trip in business class to Brussels (almost $200 of that is fees on the Air France booking and just under $100 went to Avianca for on the Brussels flight). Unfortunately, taxes & fees are a bit higher than I’d like on Air France at just over $200 departing the US, but given the timing of my trip I was happy enough.
If you have 5 or more passengers, don’t forget to look for a targeted Amex Offer that’s out for 20,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend $1,000 or more on flights via Air France that originate in the US and are paid in US Dollars.
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Nick, is there a shortcut for searching for awards when you deploy your “find a good deal to anywhere in Europe and then pay for a cheap flight to your final destination” approach? In other words, do I have to search every single route separately or is there some way to search more than one city pair at a time? Thanks.
Is there any trick to getting biz seats on AF to show on Virgin? Calling Virgin?
No, it’s just like Delta — some seats get released to partners and some don’t and there’s no rhyme or reason. If it’s available to Virgin, you should see it on the website. If you don’t see it on the website, that probably means they don’t have access to any space on that day. A reader posted a screen shot of some of the Air France space via Virgin Atlantic in our Facebook group yesterday, that’s why I assume some of these seats must be available there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s very hit or miss.
I can’t get calendar trick for Virgin Atlantic to work. How did you see any availability on VA? TIA!
When you say you can’t get the calendar trick to work, what do you mean? Are you just not finding a single date with availability so that you can get to the calendar, or are you replacing “dates” with “calendar” and it’s not opening or something? I couldn’t get the calendar to work on one attempt yesterday. I had typed “calendar” in all capital letters. When I changed it to lowercase, it worked, but I half assume that it wasn’t capitalization but that I must have had a typo in the word “calendar” and not realized it. However, if you’re using all caps, maybe try lowercase? That shouldn’t make a difference, just troubleshooting out loud since I don’t know exactly what you mean.
Thanks for responding. This morning I have not been able to find a single date for JFK to BRU one way on “upper class” where I could substitute “dates” with “calendar” successfully. I went to the end of the calendar in SEP 24/25 which shows on 25th for 50k, but when I make the word substitution, it doesn’t bring up the calendar.
Ah, I was able to do it successfully for JFK to CDG, make the substitution, and see the calendar for those flights (on Virgin Atlantic and AF). It must be availability for those BRU flights, not the calendar function.