Flying to Europe the long way

Posted by Seth on June 2, 2008 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

Every now and then an airline messes up the routing rules in their booking engines, resulting in some pretty impressive deals. I almost flew NYC to Europe via Hawaii both directions just to collect the huge number of miles associated with the trip. It looks like United may be suffering a similar fate right now, but in their Business class bookings, making the deals somewhat more attractive. They published sale fares of ~$2000 from the USA to Europe in Biz class for this summer. That alone is a pretty decent price. But it turns out that the flights can be routed through India or South Africa – all in Business class – for the same price. A well planned one of these from the West coast could net somewhere in the range of 50K miles for $2000 spent flying around in UA and Lufthansa Business class flights. Not too shabby. Sadly they don’t allow for staying in those far-flung cities as they are just connection points, but the deal is still pretty impressive.