How I got to Poland and back for $295 (and NO miles!)

Christmas came a little early for those in the travel world this past weekend. Thanks to a small regional airline in Norway, we merry travelers received many gifts from the fare gods.

The deal

Sometime around noon on Saturday, TheFlightDeal (a must-read website, by the way) reported that there were some sub-$300 fares between the U.S. and Europe…roundtrip! The flights were all on United flights or United codeshare flights (where United slaps its flight number on a partner airline’s flight), but they were being sold by Wideroe, a Norwegian regional airline owned by Scandinavian Airlines. Scandinavian Airlines is a member of Star Alliance, which United is also in, hence why Wideroe is able to sell tickets on United. The question is though, why these cheap fares? And why only on Wideroe?

Many fares, especially international ones, are made up in part by a fuel surcharge. If you look at the breakdown of a fare, it’s called “YQ”. I have no idea what that stands for. Anyway, when you pay let’s say $1,000 for a roundtrip ticket from Miami to London, it’s possible that only $50 of that is actual “base fare”, and $950 of that is a “fuel surcharge”. I don’t have a great enough understanding of how airfares are put together to know why this happens exactly, but it’s important to know that it does. On Saturday at noon, it was discovered that Wideroe’s website was not charging customers these fuel surcharges for United flights (though it’s still unclear as to why). Suddenly $1,000 airfares were pricing at $300.

The booking

I myself went into panic mode looking for deals, but I’ll admit at first I was crushed by the deluge of possibilities. After searching for random weekends for 20 minutes, I figured I was running against the clock before this fare error was corrected, so I decided to narrow my focus to just spring break. My girlfriend, fortunately in this case, had some parameters for how far she was willing to travel given her hectic teaching schedule and short break. These were enormously helpful. We very quickly narrowed our options down to Europe, and from there I looked as far west as I could for a reasonable fare to a country that neither she nor I had been to and that wasn’t easy to get to with miles.

Enter: Poland. I found a roundtrip itinerary during her break week for just $295 per person. I booked it with my Amex Platinum because it has no foreign transaction fees (this is a foreign airline). Now the waiting began to see if the fare would actually be honored.

The waiting

Wideroe’s site quickly gave me a confirmation number that I was able to enter into United’s site and see our flights. That was the first good sign; the booking really existed. But the United site said that the booking had not yet been ticketed, which meant we weren’t actually confirmed on these flights yet. My credit card has also not been charged. We went to a movie and when we got out, still no ticketing or charge.

About five hours later, sometime around 1230am, I got a notification from Amex about a possible fraudulent transaction. Probably the first time I’ve ever been excited about one of those. Sure enough, it was Wideroe, attempting to charge my card. While I wish this one had gone through, I’m glad Amex didn’t automatically accept $600 charges from foreign companies onto my card.

This put us in a bit of a situation though. It was great the card had been charged because it meant Wideroe was actually attempting to ticket the reservation, but the fact that it had been declined made me wonder if the airline would cancel the booking entirely. I called Amex to clear my card for a possible future transaction, and continued waiting.

Within a few minutes I received an email from Wideroe saying that my card had been declined. At least, I think that’s what it said. It was in Norwegian. The email had a link that I followed to a Wideroe page that looked like it had space for a new card number, so I entered it…wrong! I mistyped one of the digits and it came back with a bunch of red Norwegian text which I assumed was an error. Oh no! I re-clicked the link in my email and again went to the page and typed the card in correctly. And we waited…

While we waited, I checked our confirmation on the United website again. It had been ticketed! I could pick our seats and everything! The only concern still was my card had not been charged.

The outcome

Fast forward four days to this morning and two charges for $295 magically appear on my Amex. Not pending or anything, just straight to my transaction list.

I guess we’re going to Poland!

Fun ways to use Avios: Dublin

East Coasters looking to get away for the weekend need look no further. Dublin, an historic city and the capital of Ireland, is just a 6 hour flight from Boston, New York, and Washington. And for just 25,000 Avios roundtrip you could go there.

British Airways Avios is a distance-based program, meaning that you pay based on how far you’re flying. One of Avios’ partners is Aer Lingus, the flag carrier of Ireland. Aer Lingus flies from both New York JFK and Boston to Dublin each day. It just so happens that the distance between Boston and Dublin is just under 3,000 miles, meaning that with Avios it costs just 12,500 miles each way. 25,000 miles to get to Europe. That’s ridiculous. Flying from JFK would cost 40,000 roundtrip, still a great deal I would argue.

Finding Aer Lingus availability

Unfortunately the British Airways site does not show Aer Lingus’ award availability, so you can’t search for flights there. Luckily Qantas, which also partners with Aer Lingus, does show availability. Here’s how to search.

1    1.       Go to www.qantas.com.au and make an account

2.       Go to www.qantas.com.au and log in

3.       Click Book – Flights on the top

4.       Enter your departure city (Boston) and then enter your dates

5.       Click the arrival city and check the “Show Qantas & Classic Partner Award cities” BEFORE entering “Dublin” (otherwise it won’t show up)

6.       Click “Flexible with dates” and search

7.       Up will come a list of dates with little people icons. The people icons show dates with availability. Click the dates you want and hit continue at the bottom.

8.       The available flights will appear on the next page. Only pick direct flights on Aer Lingus, otherwise this deal won’t work. Write down the flight numbers you’ve found.

9.       Call British Airways Avios at 800-452-1201 to book. Feed them the flights you found. It should price out to 25,000 miles roundtrip plus about $47. Ask them to waive the $25 booking fee because you are unable to book this online.

And there you have it. 25,000 miles to a wonderful European city. I’ve seen worse deals!

A word of caution about British Airways Avios points

I love Avios. They literally finance my long-distance relationship.  It costs me 9,000 Avios to fly nonstop roundtrip from DC to Chicago on American Airlines and just $5 in addition. Here are some other awesome things about Avios:

1. Priority AAccess on American Airlines

This means boarding right after the top elites and getting to go through the fast security line. I have AAdvantage Gold, but my girlfriend doesn’t so Priority AAccess is invaluable given how much she flies.

2. Free cancellation

We often switch flights a day or two before flying if something better opens up because we only lose the $2.50 each flight if we cancel.

3. No late-booking fees

I could book a flight 4 hours before I fly and just pay the $2.50. No $75 late-booking fee like American charges, and I’m flying American flights!

4. Easy to earn

The Chase British Airways card has a ridiculous 100,000-point  signup bonus. BA is also a transfer partner of both Amex Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards. It is the easiest points currency to earn, in my opinion.

For all the greatness that is British Airways, there is one major warning about using them that I want to point out.

Sometimes I book a flight with Avios and need to cancel it only a few hours later. The BA website doesn’t let you cancel until 24 hours after booking, and if I wait until then I lose the $2.50 per flight. So I call (yeah I want those $2.50!). The Avios reservations line cancels my reservations, no problem. But I check a day or two later and my points aren’t back in my account. I have to call back and ask them to refund, at which point the points come back to me.

If this happened once, no big deal. But it happens nearly every time I call to cancel. So here’s the warning:

MAKE SURE YOUR AVIOS GET REFUNDED

And if they’re not, call back and request them.