Travel Miles 101 has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Travel Miles 101 and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Disclosures.

Today is a bit of a different Reader Success Story: I wanted to share how I ended up with two round-trips to Europe for just $729 and 1,106 (net) AAdvantage miles. Even better, 1.5 of the round-trips were flown in business class! Hopefully you can glean some tips from this to help you with future flights.

First, this started with a rather exceptional deal – but one that most travelers would have ignored. You could book from Oslo, Norway to many US cities in business class for around ~$600 round-trip.

The reason for my trip to Europe: RoboCup 2016, where my wife's team finished 2nd place!

The reason for my trip to Europe: RoboCup 2016, where my wife’s team finished 2nd place!

I needed to fly to Europe for RoboCup 2016, so I scheduled my “return” flights from the US to Europe to be the dates I needed them. Then, I backtracked to find an “outbound” (from Oslo to the US) date that was on sale and worked for my schedule. I ended up booking Sunday June 19 from Oslo to San Antonio and returning to Europe Sunday June 26. I would have rather flown to/from my base city Austin, but it wasn’t available as part of the deal. But, as you will see later, that didn’t mean I flew to San Antonio.

Positioning to Oslo

The first challenge was to find a positioning flight to Europe. Unfortunately, my vacation time was scarce, so I wasn’t going to be able to spend much time in Oslo before my flight back to the US. The benefit of this is that I had very little luggage for my positioning flights to Oslo, meaning I could book a budget carrier.

Norwegian Air Shuttle charges one-ways at half of the round-trip price (unlike any of the “legacy” carriers), so I booked a flight from New York’s JFK to Bergen, Norway for just $206 one-way. I could have flown into Oslo for about the same price, but I wanted to take the incredible train ride from Bergen to Oslo. I booked the flight with my Citi Prestige® so I ended up getting this flight for free by using part of my $250 travel credit.

My JetBlue travel credit came in handy to help get me to New York City for my Norwegian Air flight.

My JetBlue travel credit came in handy to help get me to New York City for my Norwegian Air flight.

Next challenge: Finding a way to New York City. I had some JetBlue travel funds that were expiring soon, so I stalked the JetBlue nonstop flight from Austin-NYC. Although the price was ~$200 one-way for months, it finally dipped to $111 and I jumped on it. After my $92 JetBlue Travel Bank credit, I ended up paying just $19 for this leg.

The timing of this flight and the Norwegian flight left me 12 hours in New York City, which I used to explore downtown Manhattan. But, this could have also been a great opportunity to hang out in the lounges of JFK thanks to my Priority Pass (benefit of my Citi Prestige).

Positioning from Oslo

After RoboCup 2016, Katie and I decided to travel around Europe a bit. Budapest had been on our travel list for a while, so we planned for me to fly back from there. Right before American Airlines’ March 22 devaluation, I snagged a one-way award flight from Budapest, Hungary to Austin in business class for 50,000 miles (57,500 miles after the devaluation) + $60 in taxes and fees.

Benefits

My business class seat from Chicago to London onboard the American Airlines 767-300

My business class seat from Chicago to London onboard the American Airlines 767-300

There are a bunch of benefits to booking revenue flights in business class that made this back-and-forth worth it. Besides the obvious superior onboard product:

  • Business class flights earn 50% more award miles
  • American Airlines and British Airways are running a business class flight promotion that got me another 25,000 AAdvantage mile bonus
  • Another business class flight promotion meant 500+ bonus AAdvantage miles for each leg
  • 100 to 200% elite-qualifying mile bonus. I earned a total of 23,098 EQMs from the OSL-AUS/SAT-OSL flights, which is almost enough for basic Gold status on American Airlines.
  • Lounge access in Oslo, London x2, Chicago x2
  • Special treatment before the flight – including allowing me to change my “destination” to Austin when there was a flight schedule change.
  • Special treatment along the way – including an offer from a flight attendant while onboard my Oslo-London flight to transfer me to less-full and more-direct flights from London.

In total, I racked up 48,894 award miles from the revenue flights, which almost fully offset my one-way business class flight back from Budapest to Austin (which cost just 50,000 before the recent changes to American Airlines award chart).

Maximization

It seems a bit crazy to fly over to Europe just to fly back the next day, but I did just that on my first Europe trip of this itinerary. If I had more time, I would have used this first trip to explore Norway for a bit before flying back to the US.

With unlimited vacation time, I could have also gotten even more creative with this deal. Instead of booking flights from Oslo to somewhere near my home (in order to work for a week before flying back to Europe), I could have booked flights from OSL to somewhere else in the US – either to explore a new city or visit family. This would mean I would have gotten a trip to Norway, a domestic US trip, and a trip through Europe for just $729 + 1,106 net AAdvantage miles.

Take-Away Points

  1. If you see a business class deal (on SecretFlying or FlyerTalk) from Europe, don’t immediately ignore it. You can patch together an incredible trip from this deal, as I did here.
  2. If you have a flight schedule change, don’t be afraid to ask to be rebooked on an itinerary with better aircraft or into a different city.
  3. Sign-up for all bonus mileage promotions that you see. I got 4,000 bonus award miles from a business class promotion that I had signed up for and forgotten about – in addition to the 25,000 bonus miles that I certainly didn’t forget about!

Travel Miles 101 has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Travel Miles 101 and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.