Chances are you dream of using your airline or credit card miles to travel to Europe.   Chances are also good that you’ve more than once played with the airline redemption calculator to see what it would cost you to realize that dream trip.  And sadly, chances are that after you looked at the results of the search, you cursed the airline and if you could throw the miles against the wall you would as you don’t have enough miles or the seats are not available. This scenario plays out every day around the world and it doesn’t need to in my opinion – with a bit of time invested in research, you can find your award just like I did.

I wanted to attend a travel conference in Dublin and first looked at the cash option (over $800 in coach from Philly) and then looked at my points options.  From Philly, I could use my British Airways points to fly to London in business class for 80k points + hundreds in fuel surcharges and then an additional cost to Dublin (either cash or points).  So my BA option was out, first due to the high cost of points/cash and second due to the fact that there wasn’t an award seat available.

My other Philly option was via USAirways direct to Dublin.  The points option here varied – while a low season award in coach should be 50k points – the dates/combinations were close to 100k points + processing fees.  A business ticket was a bucket load of points that I would not use.  Again, no award seats were available.

I then remembered reading a blog post on One Mile at a Time about direct flights from Boston to Dublin on Aer Lingus and quickly did a search to find the post about the award ticket to Dublin.  Aer Lingus is a partner of British Airways and allows award redemptions based on distance.  The BA award distance under 3,000 miles in business class would cost 50,000 miles and distances over 3,000 miles would cost 80,000 miles.  The over/under looked like this (prior to the April 2015 changes which increased the Avios needed)

Philadelphia       3, 260 miles – 80,000 points Business class

New York            3,170 miles – 80,000 points Business class

Boston                   2,980 miles – 50,000 points Business class

So Boston comes in just under the wire by about 20 miles and would save me 30,000 BA Avios. This savings would be enough for a future upgrade to business class on a BA flight.   If you wanted to fly coach from Boston, the cost is only 25,000 BA Avios miles!  Yes, the same amount required for a (if you can find it) coach domestic award in the U.S.  While you might not fly British Airways to earn their Avios miles, their credit card points really do pay off if you play the cards right especially when they offer the 50,000 sign up bonus which would get you two coach seats Boston to Dublin or like me, a business class seat.  If you meet the spend requirements, this is free travel just for signing up!  (reminder to always pay your bills in full each month).

So with the Boston to Dublin award space available, I had to figure out the repositioning  (you need to consider this with any award) to Boston.  I could fly, take Amtrak or even the Bolt Bus, each have their pros/cons with timing and costs.  The luck of the Irish was with me the day I searched the USAirways site and found a roundtrip ticket to Boston for $98 (yes, you read that correctly, all in. the cost was $98).

I booked the award ticket to Dublin (you need to call BA as the relationship with Aer Lingus isn’t online) for 50,000 points and taxes/fees of $148. Add in the $98 USAirways ticket and my cash cost was $246 for the business class ticket which normally retails for well over $3,000.  A pretty good deal and I didn’t need to throw my points against the wall in frustration.

Where are you dreaming of going with your points?

Read my review of the Aer Lingus flight business class flight from Boston to Dublin.  It was an incredible award to find that worked perfectly with the conference.  The trip to Dublin was fantastic!