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If you haven’t been following along with some of the other Boarding Area blogs and on Twitter today, there has been an amazing confluence of promotions that have led to some crazy good sales on roundtrip BUSINESS CLASS tickets from the US to Europe.  Many of the deals are gone as of now, but there are still a few available.  As of this writing (Thursday 7:10 p.m. Eastern), I was still able to find a flight for $266 and 30,000 Avios

british-airways-business-class-sale

Here are some of the posts that I’ve seen on the subject

The deals

As is often the case, the really good deals are a confluence of several different deals that are going on.

  • Deal #1: British Airways is having a 2 day sale on business class roundtrip tickets through Friday October 16th.  It’s advertised as $2015 for 2015, but throughout most of the day there were fares in the $1400-$1600 range. Currently most availability that I see is in the $2000 price range

british-airways-2015

  • Deal #2: If you join AARP (and anyone can join regardless of age for $16 – I did today along with half the travel hacking world, I’m sure), you can get $400 off business (and first) class flights on British Airways

british-airways-aarp

  • Deal #3: British Airways has always let you pay for part of your ticket with Avios, but currently, they are giving you 2.5 times the value for your Avios in paying for your ticket.  Unfortunately (for me), this deal is only for select cities: Chicago, Dallas – Forth Worth, Houston, JFK, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newark, Philadelphia International, San Francisco International, and Washington DC.

british-airways-pay-with-avios

Adding all those up, and you can fly SUPER CHEAP ($266 is as low as I’ve seen it) in business class to Europe

$266… plus miles?

So yes, the $266 is the out of pocket cost, but you do have to pay 30,000 Avios to get the out of pocket cost that low.

BUT, you’ll earn those back (and possibly more) by taking the flight!

AA & British Airways both currently have promotions giving 25,000 bonus miles (or Avios) for transatlantic roundtrips taken by January 31st.  You do need to register for those promotions before you travel (not before you book – at least with the AA promotion, the BA terms are not quite as clear)

You’ll also earn about 10,000-12,000 miles depending on the length of your particular flights, plus a class of service bonus for business class, and if you’re an elite flyer, even more!  In Miles to Memories post, he estimates he’ll get back about 50,000 miles from his flight.

$266 is not much more than you’d pay in taxes and fees on an award ticket!

(SEE ALSO: Comprehensive guide to European airport taxes and fees)

Finding available deals

As I said earlier, most of the good deals on the most common routes are gone.  There are still available deals – what I used was Google Flights (one of my Top 10 miles and points tools) to look for cities with flights in the $1400 range.  You can get $400 off from AARP, and, if you’re flying from one of the eligible cities, another $764 off with 30,000 Avios.

It also seems that you can not use Avios to pay if you are flying an airline other than British Airways or American

Good luck and happy travels!


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