Originally Posted by
GBobon
what are the best routes/airlines that give lots of miles on intraeuropean flights (aka lowest cpm)?
I am able to travel during weekends, home base is OTP. AUA biz looks interesting, and their 35-40min layover in VIE for many flights to/from OTP looks interesting, from the past I learnt that if the flight leaves with 10min, the connection is gone, so 250EUR compensations
Unfortunately, OTP is not the best airport when it comes to *A connections judging by my own experiences.
Flights on LX and SK (which normally earn decent to good) are almost non-existent and the days when they leave, they are on absolutely ...... times making connections impossible.
LH is good schedule-wise, but we all know how astonishingly bad the earnings are. Its a pity as often they have good fares in biz, but why bother booking when in their dreaded P class earning 0? LO is similar in this aspect from OTP, good connections, but at best just a handful of miles.
TK has some good connections as well, but I find them relatively overpriced on their routes from OTP compared to departure points from Western Europe, which are often (much) cheaper. For 4 short hops (eg. r/t OTP-IST-ADB) it's easily 250 EUR+ - so not the greatest CPM there.
Your suggestion of OS is a good one (well priced business class fares at times, good connections - and certainly palatable soft product compared to Lufthansa, Swiss or SAS).
Don't overlook A3 itself, while not the cheapest in business class there is often great CPM to be earned (search/book at an OTA) when flying OTP-ATH-XXX (Germany, France, Italy, UK are often cheap).
Another suggestion is to simply fly to another airport if you have a weekend to start the mileage run. Why not book a cheap direct return flight to places such as MXP, BRU or VIE - either with a *A carrier or a low cost airline? If you fly in morning, you still have the entire day ahead of you (eg. flying OTP-MXP at 6am). On flights to such places as Malpensa I hardly ever paid more than 15 EUR.
There is lots more available from such airports. If prices are right, you can first fly for example OTP-VIE, and then add for example VIE-CPH-XXX on SAS - breaking up the journey overnight, and fly back the return portions on Sunday (so basically buying 2 return tickets).With a bit of planning, you might even hit 4 sectors a day (OTP-VIE-BRU on OS; BRU-CPH-ARN on SK) this way.
In the end, I hardly bother doing mileage runs in Europe as its just not economical in most cases (with the exception of flights on A3 itself). I rather position to somewhere else and take a long-haul from there, for example on Ethiopian.