Some great deals on Business Class fares to Europe

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As I've mentioned before, in spring you can often find great deals Business Class fares for summer travel to Europe. Some years, like last year, they're harder to find, but I just now snagged a June round trip from New York to Berlin on Scandinavian for $2200. It's a one-stop itinerary via Oslo, with the long leg in their new(ish) lie-flat seat on an A330. I bought directly from SAS's website using my Amex Gold card for the 3x airfare bonus.

SAS lie-flat Business Class
$2200 isn't a great fare, but it's definitely a good one. The rest of the year these flights are usually in the high $3000s. With all of the recent mileage devaluations, this flight would have set me back 140,000 United miles. Using the mileage math, that comes out to 1.6¢ per mile when the flight is $2200. Since I'm always aiming for 2¢ a point at the bare minimum, doing this with miles didn't make sense.

Furthermore, I'll earn nearly 20,000 miles for this flight (split between Amex and United), and I wouldn't have if I'd redeemed miles instead of paying. That effectively lops another $300-ish off the price. I don't chase status, but this would also move you closer to your next elite tier and the reward seat wouldn't.

I just priced out several other dates throughout the summer and there's lots of seats in low $2k's – in August there were even cheap seats on direct flights on United and Delta. I tried a few other destinations and from New York it looks like Prague, Paris, Madrid and Warsaw had flights around the $2500 mark. Again, good but not great.

If you've been thinking about going to Europe this summer, you might want to poke at Google Flights for a few minutes and see if you find a Business Class bargain.


June
July

August


I should add here for the nerds that my dates were super inflexible, so I was unable to find any Saver Business seats on a United-operated flight, which would have been only 115,000 points – 1.9cpm at $2200. And since I've had pretty crummy experiences with United internationally, I honestly think I'd rather take SAS with a stopover for 140k than United on a direct flight for 115k…

Also, for the life of me I couldn't get the Amex travel portal to show these fares so I won't get the extra point for booking through them.  




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