How We Booked Business Class Seats to Portugal for the Cost of Economy Class
Outside Peña Palace (Sintra, Portugal)
Points & Miles Sweet Spots
If you hang around and play the points and miles game for awhile, you’re likely to hear the term “sweet spot” thrown around. Typically, this is referring to an award redemption that, when there is availability, you can potentially get outsized value, compared to a normal redemption.
Here are a few examples of some “sweet spots” that we have utilized before:
In January 2022, we flew from Detroit to Amsterdam in Delta One Suites on the A350 for 50k Virgin Atlantic miles, transferred from American Express (actually less, because we transferred during a transfer bonus.) This flight would have been close to $8,000 in cash and over 300k Delta Skymiles!
We have used British Airways Avios to fly on domestic or Caribbean American Airlines flights countless times, often at a 50%+ discount to using American miles directly.
I flew from Istanbul to Chicago in Business Class for only 45k Turkish miles, transferred from Capital One! Not all of their business class seats have this saver award availability, but when they do, this is a steal!
We flew from JFK to Lima, Peru on LATAM’s new 767 Business Class for only 45k Alaska miles and had a great experience!
However, for our recent flight to Portugal, I don’t know whether to call it a “sweet spot” or “IT glitch”. Let me explain.
We booked 4 business class seats using Avianca Lifemiles, transferred from American Express, for only 35k miles each. As you see below, that’s only 5k more miles than an economy seat!
And factor in that we transferred points to Avianca during a 15% transfer bonus from American Express and our business class tickets cost us just over 30k miles each, the SAME price as Economy!
Here’s why I say I don’t know whether to call it a “sweet spot” or an “IT glitch”. Look at the prices on this same flight, but in reverse (from Lisbon back to JFK):
As you can see, the Economy price is the same as the JFK-LIS route (30k miles), but the business class price shoots up to Avianca’s normal US-Europe business class price for Star Alliance saver awards for LIS-JFK: 63k miles! The only reason that I am tempted to call it a “sweet spot” is that it has been live for a few years, so you would think that they would have changed it by now if it was simply a mistake!
Courtney and Merritt on our TAP Portugal flight from JFK-Lisbon. By no stretch of the imagination is this in the top quarter of business classes in the world: the service was mediocre, the food was bland, and we had a two-hour delay, despite the inbound flight being on-time.
However, a lie-down seat from the U.S. to Europe for 35k miles is WILD and definitely worth it!
Our Trip
We’ll be sharing more about our 11-day trip to Portugal in the weeks to come, but here were our top highlights:
Compared to most of Western Europe, Portugal is MUCH less expensive. Think night-and-day compared to last year’s October trip to Switzerland and Eastern France. What cost us $100 for a mediocre meal in Switzerland cost us $50 for a delicious meal in Portugal.
The Portuguese island of Madeira, where we spent 5 days, quickly became one of our favorite places in the world. The climate, the people, the diversity of activities - from swimming, to snorkeling, to hiking, to exploring the capital city of Funchal, and the beauty (it’s often labeled the “Hawaii” of Europe, for good reason!) However, there was one substantial difference from Hawaii: it was reasonably priced! Our 3-bedroom Airbnb in Madeira cost just over $200 a night, but would have easily been $700+ a night in Hawaii!
We were less impressed with Lisbon than other European capital cities that we’ve been to, like Amsterdam, Bern, Vienna, and London. We easily could have been pleased with two days in Lisbon and more time in Madeira!
Conclusion
Would we fly TAP Portugal’s A330-900neo business class again, if we had a chance? For 35k miles, when booked with Avianca, we certainly would! This deal is definitely worth snatching up before Avianca fully comprehends what they are giving away here!
