Questions and Answers

Hello fellow travelers, I was looking to book A trip to paris anytime in May from any Wed to Mon. I wanted to fly nonstop from Miami to Paris. The two airlines that fly nonstop to paris from Miami is American Airlines and Air France. What is the best way to go about booking on either of these two airlines for two business classes tickets?

Welcome!!

It depends on whether you are looking for paid or award travel.

If you are looking for paid travel, the easiest way is to log on to either Air France’s or American Airlines’ websites, plug in your dates and purchase the tickets.

If you are looking to travel on an award it depends on the mileage currencies that you have. If you have AMEX or other points you could transfer to FlyingBlue or Delta if there is availability on AF. If you are looking to fly AA and you see saver space, you can book via AAdvantage or BA Avios.

If you can only fly on very specific dates I would look at using either FlyingBlue or AAdvantage points. With these two programs you can book standard availability that while expensive, will give you a lot more possible dates.

Hope this helps.

[QUOTE=”phize, post: 26779, member: 1164″]Welcome!!

It depends on whether you are looking for paid or award travel.

If you are looking for paid travel, the easiest way is to log on to either Air France’s or American Airlines’ websites, plug in your dates and purchase the tickets.

If you are looking to travel on an award it depends on the mileage currencies that you have. If you have AMEX or other points you could transfer to FlyingBlue or Delta if there is availability on AF. If you are looking to fly AA and you see saver space, you can book via AAdvantage or BA Avios.

If you can only fly on very specific dates I would look at using either FlyingBlue or AAdvantage points. With these two programs you can book standard availability that while expensive, will give you a lot more possible dates.

Hope this helps.[/QUOTE]
I am so sorry for not being more specific. I was trying to book using award miles. I have around 300k American Airlines Miles. Over 200k amex points through the platinum card and over 130k points through the New Chase Saphire Reserve card. I could book directly through American Airlines, but spending 420k for a roundtrip ticket for two sounds a bit ridiculous. Especially since the flight is only 9 hours. I was wondering if there is a better way to go about using my points? A way to maximize my points. The american airlines is AA anytime. They dont have aa silver (whatever the discount version is ). Sorry to bother , but again thank you for your help. Very very very helpful.

Your points seem to be well split. If I were you, I would check if one way is available with AA and the other way on AF. Both programs offer good rates on one way so it would not be a loss in comparison to doing a roundtrip on one carrier. Please reply if there is anything I missed or any problems. 🙂

It was 110k one way each person through American. I was wondering whether I should transfer those points or transfer some CC points onto another One World or another Sky Team partner to maybe get a better deal? Buying the business class ticket is $6k per person. Maybe I should just fly Air Europa with a quick layover and only pay $2,600 a person?

[USER=2833]@Benjamin Cohen[/USER] You are looking at standard awards when spending 110K per. These awards offer little value for your points. A simple way to value them is to take the total price if you paid and divide by the number of points. So your $6K / 220,000 is 2.7 cents, minus the points you aren’t going to earn from the revenue ticket. Thats not half bad, although I would never get a standard award using points unless it is an absolute must. A saver award is half this or $6K / 110,000 (minus the Citi AA card discount if you have that card), so you are getting a value of over 5 cents a point. The true test is to take the lowest fare for the route and divide by the number of points. In this case it’s $2,600 / 220,000 or about 1.2 cents a point. I always compare the 2 calculations and never get a reward ticket unless I’m getting 3 cents or more value. But that’s just me.

Transferring points is not going to get you a better deal. I’m not sure where you are going with that comment.

Often with reward tickets you have to be flexible. Your conditions of direct and on certain days severely limits your success on finding a saver reward. They are your points and you can spend them as you see fit, but for me if I had to fly direct on specific days and no saver rewards were available, then the Air Europa option is pretty good.

(Also you can try Delta.com for booking this trip as well)

Thank you so much for all your help! I think I will just save my points and use them during a time where I can be more flexible. My transfering to a different airline I thought maybe If i transfer points to british and use British to buy American Airlines or go through delta it might come out cheaper than 220k for roundtrip tickets per person. I guess thats not how miles work. I think I am just going to book the Air Europa tickets using cash as supposed to purchasing this trip using miles. Thank you so much for everything 🙂

Generally award space on an airlines such as American is made available to all the Alliance partners. The difference is if you use the partner to ticket the reward you pay the partner redemption, so sometimes it pays to know all the programs in the alliance if you can transfer points to them.

On the other hand, some partners don’t always release the reward space for their flights to partners. Korean Air is an example where they often have 9 premium seats available but only release 1 to partners.

Air Europa is a Sky Team member. With you having Chase and AMEX points you can transfer Chase to Korean Air and AMEX to Delta. So if you buy this flight sign up for one of the 2 programs (if not already a member) and credit the points you earn to one of them. Delta is probably your best option but its up to you. Good luck.

Thank you so much it means a lot 🙂