mjh218

I am flying from the west coast to Munich around August 20th for a wedding. Will be touring around Europe and not sure of my final plans so will only be booking one way for now. I live in San Diego, so I would prefer to leave from San Diego or LA. May use points if it makes sense, but otherwise going to use cash. If I want to use points, what is my best bet? I am platinum if that makes any difference

mvoight

If you want to redeem miles you may not have any choices that fit your dates.
What is "best" depends on a variety of factors. For example, some people want to have a long flights (for sleeping) and a short flight, or "best" might mean the chances of an upgrade if using an upgrade award.
For example LAX to London to Munich. Note: If flying via UK, beware of awards offering British Airways flights, especially on the Transatlantic segment due to high surcharges.

I do see MileSaaver Economy available for Aug 20 from SAN to Munich via DFW with connections from 1 hr 25 minutes (DON'T) to 3 hrs 38 minutes
You need to look at what is available for the days you want to travel and go from there.

mjh218

I am a bit flexible on dates. Essentially, I need to be in northern Austria on that Friday. So looking at getting to Munich a day or two earlier.

TomMM

Have you priced one way cash fares?

Mwenenzi

The one way prices may surprise the OP
USA Eu business class awards are hard to get
AA thread ---> Where exactly does AA fly to Europe? Which routes have good business seats?

There are many airlines that will get you from USA west coast to central Eu. AA/oneworld may not be best option

JMN57

Unless you don't care about cost one-ways are prohibitive. If you want to do two one-ways, you'll want to do mileage awards. Anytimes, by definition, are easily available. SAAver's (particularly business) are difficult. Would recommend an ExpertFlyer subscription if you are hunting for SAAver business.

JPG3392

Depending on where you are going in Austria, you may wish to consider flying AA to LHR and BA to either Innsbruck or Salzburg. The flights to INN operate 3x weekly. As others have indicated, BA imposes prohibitive surcharges on its transatlantic award flights, but the surcharge on award flights to the European continent is much more modest.

mvoight

I have found some decent Finnair OneWay fares from Moscow using Expedia and Travelocity. I was finding fares lower than I could find on the AY website.

JJeffrey

If you're looking for economy class this is easy, right now there are plenty of sAAver economy seats open on your exact date for SAN-DFW-MUC, it won't get to look any better than that.

Business class becomes much tougher, don't see anything that doesn't involve BA on the longhaul segment which of course includes the ripoff $600+ in taxes and fuel surcharges. Stay away from that.

I've used a few sAAver business awards to get to Europe in August over the past few years, availability has actually opened up a bunch IF you can be flexible and wait until around 2 weeks before to book AND you can be flexible a bit on destinations. This means taking whatever sAAver business seat you can find to FRA/ZRH/MUC/MXP/MAD etc., and then just buying a cheap one-way to your final destination.

Given this is a wedding, and you'll probably want to have something nailed down, I'd book the economy award now and just keep an eye on if better business availability opens up. This is a free change.

And as mentioned above, unless you want to fly over on a LCC like Norweigan or WOW, one-way fares will be prohibitively expensive.

craz

as many others have already stated, paying ca$h will be very expensive

I had a similar situation, have an event in Zurich I have to be at in end of May and wanted to see Munich. wanted to go out of/ return to JFK to avoid having to park my car in alot for 7-8 days. AA was showing me lousy connections and in Y only, all I wanted in Biz as long as it was on BA and paying more in surcharges then what a coach tkt would cost.Was gonna give up with AA since I didnt want to fly on their 777s to LHR and then BA with 29" leg-room. Then my event in ZRH was moved up by 1 day and finally a JFK-CLT opened up w/o having to spend 8 hrs @ CLT. So Im flying JFK-CLT-MUC < 2 hrs @ CLT and the A330 from CLT

Getting back to JFK from ZRH was worse on AA thru PHL, so I used my UA miles for a LX non-stop in Y and flying MUC-ZRH using UA miles

If you dont have UA miles but do have Chase UR pts you can transfer them over @ 1:1

I wanted AA only to use up my larger then needed stash of AA miles but by far I find AA is LOUSY when it comes to Europe as only BA or IB are in OW and that means alot extra $$ and having to fly via those hubs to get somewhere

skunker

Use miles to get there and buy a flight back. Flying from CPH or ARN on roundtrip ticket is less than $500 to LAX and about $600 to SAN. It would be even less if you fly Norwegian.

Or, this could work:


Subbing in SAN for above is only a bit more.