I'm hoping more experienced travelers may have advice for us. We travel 1-2/year internationally but we're under some tight constraints. We have teens in HS/college so we are traveling during the busy winter holiday break. Our tentative plan is to fly 12/25-1/1, as I see from Google flights those dates are cheaper than before Christmas or after New Year's. We only have 7-10 days due to both my husband's work schedule and our own tolerance levels. We take a very low key approach to vacations, with a priority on eating delicious food and then leisurely strolling the town or relaxing at the apartment so it's still worth it to us to travel internationally for fewer than 2 weeks.

Our closest major airport is SFO and I see TAP Portugal has a direct flight SFO-LIS. We strongly prefer lay flat business class seats for both comfort and ability to sleep so we get a running start to our international trips. However it's nearly $30K for J seats for 4. To save money, I could book J to LIS so we get some sleep on the plane as it's an early evening departure. Then we could return in Economy as it's a daytime flight. That's about $16K. However, I've seen mixed reviews on TAP and this would only save us $4K flying economy on the way home compared to round-trip J on other airlines (but with stops).

Air Canada and British Air are 2 options with 1-3 hour layovers and they're about $20K for J round-trip. I typically hate layovers but if we're traveling J, then we can just sit in the lounge. We have Chase UR points and United points (plus Silver "status" on United, which doesn't mean much, I know). However, I don't have 1.2M points (it's about 300K points per person when I looked on United).

Any and all feedback welcome!