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- With Europe reopening to vaccinated Americans, I took advantage of a cheap business class fare.
- Instead of paying cash, I redeemed Ultimate Rewards points through the Chase Travel Portal.
- I spent just 67,000 points and $0 in cash for a round-trip ticket to Amsterdam in a lie-flat seat.
- Read Insider’s guide to the best rewards credit cards.
If you’re looking to fly business class between the US and Europe, your choices are mostly limited to legacy airlines (like United, American, British Airways, and Lufthansa, for example) which often have pretty egregious pricing. Pre-pandemic, it wasn’t unusual to see round-trip fares that cost $5,000 or more.
Thankfully there are a number of airlines looking to disrupt this pricing model, including JetBlue, which will begin offering its Mint business class on flights to London later this year, and TAP Portugal. A member of Star Alliance, TAP has been on my radar for a while as it tends to offer some of the cheapest business class fares on the market between the East Coast and Europe, connecting via its hub in Lisbon (LIS).
Normally when I’m booking an award ticket I don’t pay much attention to the cash price. With very few exceptions, a business class ticket costs the same number of miles whether the airline is charging $1,000 or $10,000 for that seat.
With Europe slowly reopening to vaccinated Americans, I’ve been trying to plan a summer trip that I’ll actually be able to take, and was thrilled to find that TAP is selling round-trip business class tickets between the US and a number of European cities for as low as $990! As a point of comparison, on the same day we’re flying, every other airline is charging over $1,000 for round-trip economy flights, so it’s actually cheaper for us to splurge for business class.
At the time of post writing, these fares are available from several cities including my home airport of Miami, Newark, Washington Dulles, Boston, and Chicago to name a few. Eligible European destinations include London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, and Barcelona, with plenty of other options available for under $1,500 round-trip. TAP doesn’t fly all of these routes every day of the week, so you’ll want to play around with the calendar on Google Flights to find availability.
$990 for a round-trip business class ticket is a phenomenal deal, but the entire point of award travel is trying to pay as little as possible for the trips you want to take. That’s why when I decided to take advantage of this fare and book a two-week trip to Amsterdam and Santorini, I redeemed Chase Ultimate Rewards points and paid exactly $0 out of pocket.
How I used Chase points to book cheap business class flights to Europe
Because these are regular cash fares, you can search for them on the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal and redeem points instead to cover the cost. If you have the
If you have a
Chase
To put that into perspective, most airlines charge 60,000 to 70,000 miles for one-way business class awards, so this is basically a 50% off sale! I love the versatility of Ultimate Rewards points, which let me switch seamlessly between redeeming them for cash fares and transferring to valuable partner airlines.
Even if you don’t have Ultimate Rewards points, you can take advantage of similar pay with points bonuses with American Express cards. The
Many other issuers will let you pay for flights with points at a fixed 1 cent each. If you recently applied for the
This is a great option to keep in mind any time you see a good fare sale you want to jump on. Instead of seeing the cheap prices and thinking about how much money you’ll save, you can redeem points for the discounted flight and not spend a penny at all. Just remember to comparison shop, and make sure you’re getting a better deal than if you’d transferred your miles to a partner program to book.
One added bonus to sweeten the deal even further: since these are cash fares, you’ll earn miles for the flight. I credited my ticket to my United MileagePlus account, so these miles can complement the bonus I just picked up on the
According to Great Circle Mapper, flying Miami-Lisbon-Amsterdam-Lisbon-Miami covers a distance of roughly 10,600 miles. When crediting a TAP business class fare to United you’ll earn 125% of the distance flown, so I’ll get just over 13,000 United miles back in my account.
Ethan Steinberg is an award-travel expert who loves helping readers leverage their credit card rewards for luxurious international travel on a budget.
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