Last year we were helping some friends who were miles and points newbies put together their dream trip to Europe; what credit cards to get, which points to earn, how to transfer the points and ultimately how to book the flights and hotels. Little did we know at the time we would end up taking almost the same trip in parallel!
Their bucket list destination was Rome and we encouraged them to consider another destination in Europe too. Why fly all the way there and not check out another city or country? Once they had their Chase Ultimate Rewards stash built up, we started searching and very quickly found a great option over spring break to Paris and Rome. As we were going through the process of transferring the points and booking the flights it hit me – this is a great deal and we should jump on it too!
My wife and our friend both work at a school so they had the same spring break, and this year the school extended it to include a full week plus the following Monday and Tuesday. For good measure we extended it another day and let our kids miss the first day back; totally worth it to experience history vs read about it in class for a day.
Taking a trip across 5 airlines might sound complicated, but with miles and points it was quite easy to put together. I always start with the longest flights first and then piece together the positioning flights at the end. For our friends we booked everything with Chase points transferred to airlines and for our flights we used transferred Chase and Amex points for the long legs and cheap cash fares for the short ones.
In total, for 4 people, this is how we built our itinerary:
St Louis to Detroit to Paris on Delta and Air France premium economy for 36k Flying Blue miles per person.
Paris to Rome on ITA Airways on a cheap cash fare
Rome to Amsterdam to Chicago O’Hare on KLM premium economy for 30k Flying Blue miles per person
Chicago Midway to St Louis on Southwest on a $60 cash fare.
For the two main legs for four people, that amounted to 264k Flying Blue miles to fly in premium economy against a cash price of $13,659 or about 5.2 cents per point value. As someone who has traveled across the pond many times in economy, trust me, premium economy is a huge improvement. We flew KLM premium economy from Chicago to Amsterdam previously and really enjoyed it so I was also interested to compare the two products back to back.
The thing is, $13k was significantly more than our entire budget for the trip so the only way to make this trip happen was through miles and points. It was also special because it was the first time both of our kids had visited continental Europe and getting to travel in somewhat upgraded accommodations made that more fun. Flying 5 different airlines and touching 7 different airports in one trip might sound very complicated but it was a breeze to book and made entirely possible by miles and points.
TL;DR: While helping friends plan a dream trip to Europe, I decided to book a very similar trip for us too using Chase and Amex points to fly premium economy to Europe. For four people, we used 264k Flying Blue miles versus $13,659 if paid in cash, a strong value for the transferable points. This was a special trip as it was the first time our kids visited Europe, and they enjoyed the comfort of premium economy.
