Sunday, January 1, 2012

Getting to Europe CHEAP

Every time we come home to visit, people tell us how much they really want to come visit Hungary, but they can't afford to make the trip.  We've helped a number of people get there, thanks to one of my favorite past times... letting credit card companies pay for the trip!

Here's the short version of this post...
  1. Get some American Airlines credit cards that have large sign-up bonuses
  2. Plan your trip between October 15 and March 15 (off-peak times)
  3. Call American Airlines to book your trip using any of the One World Airlines (except perhaps British Airways).
By doing this, you can nearly travel for free.  So let me expand on each point.
  1. Get some American Airlines credit cards that have large sign-up bonuses
    1. Citibank regularly offers large sign-up bonuses on their credit cards.  For example, in the past 15 months or so, they offered a 75K mile sign-up bonus on credit cards after a certain amount of spend (e.g. spend 5 thousand dollars in 6 months or something similar).  
    2. Citibank offers 2 different American Airlines personal cards (e.g. MasterCard and American Express).  You can apply and receive bonuses for both with a little bit of research.  Of course, you have to meet the minimum spend on both cards to get the bonus.
    3. Citibank also offers a business card that most people can apply for and receive the bonus for.  I personally have never done this, but I know many that do.
  2. Plan your trip between October 15 and March 15 (off-peak times)
    1. American Airlines offers a 33% reduction in required miles to travel in coach between USA and Europe between October 15 and March 15.  Instead of the normal 60K miles that are required, it only takes 40K miles.
    2. You can use any of the One World alliance airlines to get between the USA and Europe.  This includes American, British Airways (avoid them if you can as their taxes/fees are excessive compared to others), Finnair, Iberia, Malev, and S7 airlines.
  3. Call American Airlines to book your trip using any of the One World Airlines (except perhaps British Airways).
    1. Before you call, decide with everyone you might be travelling with when you want to travel, what the earliest/latest you can travel is, and any alternate cities you are willing to use.  The more flexible you are, the more likely they can find something.
    2. Be prepared to be on the phone between 30 minutes and an hour.  Be patient and let the representative do their job
    3. When the representative answers, tell them what you want to do, but that you have some flexibility.  I usually also tell them I am not interested in flying British Airways across the Atlantic due to their excessive fees/fuel surcharges.  This is good information because they regularly use British when booking these awards.  Avoiding them will save you between $200 and $400/ticket most likely.
    4. The representative will likely try to get you from any gateway city (e.g. Dallas, Chicago, New York JFK, Miami are all common examples, but there may be some others) to another gateway city (e.g. London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, etc.) first.  Once they have found that, they begin working on the domestic portions of your trip.
    5. Believe it or not, sometimes the domestic portion is the harder to find availability on.  They do have the ability to request that award seats be opened up if they found the international portion, but not the domestic.  In my most recent booking, the seats were opened up.  I was surprised, but this may be reasonably common.
    6. You may have to overnight somewhere.  For example, American flies direct from JFK to Budapest, but the flight time makes it hard to get there from Houston.  
    7. You may have to change airports.  For example, most international flights leave from JFK, but a lot of domestic flights go to other New York-area airports.
    8. You may have to fly out of a different airport than the city you live in.  For example, you can go Austin to JFK to Budapest all without overnighting somewhere.  That is much harder to do from Houston.
  4. This seems like a lot of work, but let's assume you are a family of 4 -- you would need 160K miles to fly round-trip to Europe when booking through American Airlines.  If you applied for 2 personal cards with a 75K sign-up bonus, you could easily get 160K miles (2 cards * 75K bonus = 150K; to get the bonus, you might have to spend 5K USD on the card which also earns you points.  5K @ 2 cards = 10K miles.  150K bonus + 10K spend = 160K = enough miles for a family of 4 to travel to Europe during offpeak times).
Of course, there are other ways to make this happen, but this is one of the cheapest I have found.  Citibank regularly runs good sign-up bonuses.  American has the cheapest options to Europe.  If you absolutely have to use a different airline alliance, most of the principles above will apply also, but it will cost you more miles and it may be harder to earn those miles.

Questions? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

7 comments:

  1. you're awesome! Thanks for sharing...

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  2. so I have another question! How do you get to disney??? You've got to have some tricks for that, right? Please share b/c we are planning a trip!!! :)

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    1. get to Disney or make it cheap? We have flown every time. Since Southwest goes there, fares are usually reasonable. Check airfarewatchdog.com daily and when the fare goes on sale, book it.
      We prefer staying off property because we don't usually do the Disney meal plan. Most diehards swear by staying on property and doing the meal plan. We stayed on property one time and it just didn't do it for us. We usually get the Courtyard or Fairfield or similar in Lake Buena Vista. Breakfast is included there, I think at all of them. We take a snack in with us and don't hesitate to take a break in the day (e.g. back to the hotel) if we need to. You can also take water bottles, etc. in to the park. We usually hit a grocery store up shortly after arriving to stock up on all of those sorts of things. Walgreen's will have the stuff you have to have but forgot also (like sunglasses, rain ponchos or whatever) at much cheaper prices than Disney.
      We've done a time share review one time. I don't think it was worth it because we only got some Fast Passes, but if the incentive is good enough, it might be worth your time.
      Any other questions, just ask! There are a lot of Disney experts out there -- we just try to do it cheap.
      Oh, one more thing, the more days you stay, it basically just costs you a hotel and food as the additional Disney days are so cheap after about day 3 or 4. That frees you up to be a lot more relaxed also.
      Larry

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  3. thanks for info! We're first-timers to Disney!!! I figured that the Stanteens would have it figured out. :)

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  4. Oh yes, I do have another question! Do you find it more convenient (and/or cheaper) to get a rental car and park at Disney...vs. using Disney shuttles from the Disney properties? And, what about shuttle from airport? I have noticed that the Disney resorts offer free shuttle to and from the airport. Wondering if that's worth it?

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    1. We use Hotwire/Priceline to get a car (there's a strategy for that, too, but it's too long for a comment -- read biddingfortravel.com or betterbidding.com and let me know if you have questions or need help). We find that rental car from the airport + parking at the park + offsite hotel is far cheaper (and a better fit for our family) than staying on property. But again, most diehards would disagree and say stay on property, use Disney transportation and don't get a car at all.

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