Last December, I made a trip with some coworkers to Vienna just to visit the Christmas Markets. I LOVED IT – so much so that when my mom had Flying Blue miles leftover and about to expire, I just had to find a way to go back. Let this be a warning – you should still never speculatively transfer miles 🙂 but I guess I got a free trip out of it!

Where I’m Headed

This trip isn’t going to be as deep as the last one, in the sense that I’m not going to explore just one city for a whole week. Instead, I’m smushing together such a complicated itinerary that even MY head gets confused. So what is it?

In the end, I will visit the following locations in just 13 days:
– Paris, FR
– Seville, ES
– Cordoba, ES
– Malaga, ES
– Berlin, DE
– Prague, CZ

Now with Flying Blue, there’s normally a set of “Promo Awards” available with different destinations every month. But while there was availability in Economy for most locations in the US and Canada, I was trying to use a large number of miles here, so wanted to focus only on business and premium economy redemptions in both directions.

I didn’t find anything with 50k miles flat (or 37.5k on a promo award for that matter), but I was able to find a seat from YYZ to CDG to anywhere in Europe for 59k miles. Funny enough, flying just YYZ-CDG would have cost about 133k miles, so always check other locations in case of married segment logic! Initially, I was looking at North Africa since it’s the same price, but ended up choosing Spain instead. My family and I visited Madrid and Barcelona previously, so now it was time to head south.

For long-time friends, you’ll also know that Flying Blue allows for free stopovers on tickets. Since YYZ-CDG was available on both Wednesday and Thursday, but CDG-SVQ was available only on Friday, I decided to give it a try. This did involve a call into Flying Blue, but the agent (from the UK) was super helpful and knowledgeable in booking. In the end, I booked:
12/11 Business YYZ-CDG AF387 2330-1310
12/13 Business CDG-SVQ AF1546 1300-1530
Total: 59k miles + $268

Then for the return I booked:
12/24 Premium Economy PRG-CDG AF1583 0630-0830
12/24 Premium Economy CDG-DEN AF630 1015-1235
Total: 37.5k miles + $128.30

So while my transatlantic flights were set, I had to get to Toronto and back from Denver to Las Vegas for the holidays. So I had the following positioning flights:
12/10 Economy LAS-SFO UA2488 1720-1902
12/11 Economy SFO-YYZ UA608 0849-1652
Total: $108.77

12/24 Economy DEN-LAS WN2816 1710-1810
Total 5263 points + $5.60

In total, this trip cost me 101.8k miles + $510.67. I didn’t include the intermediate transfers, like my train ticket from Seville to Malaga or my flight on RyanAir to Berlin. But maybe I’ll include some details here or there.

A word on repositioning flights…

When you play the points game, you may find availability in cities outside of the ones you live in (just like what I did in this instance). While I can easily fly out of LAS, DEN, or BOS, any other city would require a risky connection.

When airlines operate flights, they are only responsible for booking you from A to B in full. They do not care about your onwards journeys, tours, trains, cruises, etc. Keep this in mind when it comes to delays or cancellations. If my UA flight to YYZ gets delayed for 12 hours, I’m more or less screwed because my flight out of YYZ is with Air France on a completely different itinerary.

When you book repositioning flights, always build in a bit of a buffer and always have a backup plan. I have A-List on Southwest, so I know that even if Air France delays my flight and I miss my connection, I can switch to any Southwest flight that day without penalty. If Air France has to cancel the flight altogether, then the EU261 compensation should offset some of the costs.

The Hype

I’ve reviewed Air France’s Premium Economy before from Vienna, so I’m not extremely excited about that one. I initially wanted to review the KLM product instead, but there were no available seats at the 37.5k price point anywhere.

But this will be the first time I fly Air France’s business class. Last time I flew Air Canada and there is a lot of hype to live up to. Since the flight is so late in the evening, I would value quality sleep over food and beverage. Unfortunately I’m not flying the new business or La Premiere class, but I’ve heard the seats are still above average.

And funny enough, I’ll still be flying through Canada this time, even if I’m not on Air Canada!