The Real Cost Of My Familys 4 RoundTrip Award Tickets To Europe This Summer
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Award travel is never free.
I just needed to get that out of the way. If an influencer ever tells you otherwise, run. Even if there are no annual fees involved in earning miles, all awards have taxes and/or fees and an opportunity cost.
If I had fewer scruples, the headline on this article would have read “How I Got $18,627 Of Luxury Flights For $744”, but I’m not that guy. To get to that number I would have to book the exact same one-way flights in the exact same class and negate the value of miles. But I see this kind of headline daily on blogs and social media.
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My colleague Caroline Lupini published a really detailed account of how she spent 200,000 Aeroplan points that got me thinking about how rarely we see the true costs of award travel laid out. With that in mind, I want to share the exact costs in miles and cash my family of four spent on our flights for our European vacation.
But in order to do that properly, we need to have something to compare our awards to. So as a thought experiment, I’m going to also price out these tickets as I would have bought them were I paying cash and then determine whether or not I got a good deal.
The Trip: England, Switzerland and The Netherlands
Our summer trip plans are more complicated than most as my family is traveling on three different itineraries. My daughter and I are spending the summer in Europe starting in Geneva, Switzerland and ending in Amsterdam, spending time in England in between.
We have such an offbeat plan partly due to my love of second-tier cities and partly because I was able to find house sitting opportunities so that we can have free lodging. On this trip, my husband is joining us for the Switzerland portion and my college-age son is coming over to visit while we are in England.
The Rules of the Game
One thing to consider is that travel crowds are back and airfare to Europe this summer is more expensive than perhaps we’ve ever seen. I was shocked at the price of these tickets on Google Flights. If we weren’t tied to the school calendar I would have moved our trip to the fall because both airfare and crowds would have been much less. Bargains can be had, but they usually come at the cost of flexibility.
When I look at comparable cash prices, I will look at premium economy prices for the business class award flights I booked, while I’ll consider economy class prices for the premium economy flights and economy flights I booked. At this stage in the travel game I can live without a lie-flat seat (although it is nice to have), but on flights over the pond I’m willing to pay more for a premium economy seat. I will also prioritize non-stop flights whenever possible and price each leg as half of a round-trip ticket. I’ll lay out each flight and summarize the results at the end.
I always ask myself some questions when deciding whether to spend miles or cash:
- How easy or difficult are these miles to obtain? For instance, Air France/KLM Flying Blue has a large number of transfer partners, American Airlines AAdvantage much fewer.
- Do I have enough money to buy a cash ticket if miles aren’t a good value? In some cases, if I absolutely need to get us from A to B on a specific date it might make sense to spend miles sub-optimally in order to save cash for other expenses.
- Do I have orphaned miles? If I have miles already in a frequent flyer account from a promotion or canceled trip I’m more likely to use them up before pulling out my wallet.
- What is the absolute least value I would accept for these miles? This will vary person-to-person, but for airline miles the floor for me is 1 cent per mile in value. If it’s between getting less than one cent and buying a ticket, I’ll pull out my credit card.
My Daughter and Me: From D.C. to Geneva, Switzerland; Then Home From Amsterdam
Option 1: Award Ticket for 233,000 Miles Plus $806
Strangely, on our return award flights business class was cheaper than premium economy and even economy.
Pro Tip
Be sure to check all classes of service before assuming which will be the least expensive.
- On the outbound leg, I couldn’t find a non-stop flight from D.C. so we are leaving from New York (JFK) on SWISS airlines. The flight cost 120,000 Aeroplan miles plus $109 for two tickets in business class.
- On the return leg, I found a non-stop flight from Amsterdam in KLM business class for a total of 113,000 Flying Blue miles plus $635.
- I also bought two train tickets for $62 for us to get from D.C. to New York.
Option 2: Cash Ticket $5,835 in Premium Economy, $4,629 in Economy
One advantage of booking award tickets is that it’s a lot easier to book one-way tickets. To replicate the experience we’re actually having, I’m pricing a round-trip ticket from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Geneva (GVA). Then I’m adding on a train ticket to get between Geneva and Amsterdam and back to Geneva for the return flight.
- Non-stop round-trip tickets on United cost $5,467 in premium economy, $4,261 in economy.
- Round-trip train tickets from Geneva to Amsterdam cost $368.
- I would never have paid it, but the cash pricing in business class is $13,308 for the same flight.
Value of Miles: 2.2 Cents per Mile vs. Premium Economy, 1.5 Cents per Mile vs. Economy
To calculate the value of miles you take the net cost of the flights (flight total cost minus transit costs, award fees and taxes) and divide it by the total number of miles you spent. The difference between the cash cost of the flights and the taxes I paid is $5,029 in premium economy and $3,455 in economy. Take those numbers and divide them by 233,000 to get the net value per mile.
Verdict: Award Ticket
In this case using miles was a no-brainer because we needed two one-way tickets. Pretty much any trip to Europe will be cheaper round-trip than one-way so if I wanted to avoid a trip back to Switzerland to get home, miles were the way to go.
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