What are some specific business class award sweet spots that travelers should know about?
51% FrequentMiler
23% Sam Chui
22% View from the Wing
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There are several business‑class award sweet spots that let you travel in comfort for a fraction of the usual mileage cost.
Star Alliance and American Airlines
- A Denver → Istanbul business‑class award can be booked for about 88,000 miles on Turkish Airlines Boarding Area .
- American Airlines’ new Boeing 787‑9 routes to London Heathrow from Chicago or Philadelphia often price business‑class awards between 55,000 and 68,000 miles Boarding Area .
Alaska Airlines (new chart)
- East‑Coast → Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc drops to 55,000 miles in business class View from the Wing .
- Icelandair business‑class awards now cost as little as 30,000 – 35,000 miles, comparable to premium economy View from the Wing .
- A stop‑over‑friendly route from Los Angeles to Papeete (Tahiti) and onward to New Zealand is available for 75,000 miles in business class View from the Wing .
Singapore KrisFlyer (July 2023 deal)
- Jakarta ↔ Singapore for only 14,700 miles one‑way.
- Singapore ↔ Manila or Ho Chi Minh City for 16,800 miles.
- Singapore ↔ Hong Kong for 23,800 miles.
- Singapore ↔ major Indian cities (Ahmedabad, Dhaka, Mumbai, New Delhi) for 30,100 miles.
- Sydney or Christchurch ↔ Singapore for 47,950 miles Sam Chui .
LifeMiles (Citi ThankYou partner)
- Business‑class to Asia for 75,000 miles one‑way.
- Africa for 78,000 miles.
- Europe for 63,000 miles.
- Oceania for 80,000 miles.
- South America for just 35,000 miles FrequentMiler .
Other notable business‑class sweet spots
- ANA round‑trip business class between the U.S. and Japan/Asia can be secured for 90,000 miles or less FrequentMiler .
- Etihad Guest (via Amex, Citi, or Capital One) offers a 44,000‑mile business‑class award on Royal Air Maroc for any U.S. gateway to its network FrequentMiler .
- A Korean‑mile round‑trip to Europe can be booked for 80,000 miles, with a trick to avoid fuel surcharges FrequentMiler .
These examples illustrate where business‑class redemptions are especially valuable across different programs and alliances. By targeting these mileage thresholds, you can enjoy premium cabins without the usual high mileage price.
Summer’s Travel Lull: A Prime Time for Premium Award Seats
I’ve noticed that when the rhythm of corporate trips lets up, many airlines begin releasing extra business-class award seats to leisure travelers. In my experience, peak business travel often crowds out these perks, so the seasonal dip in corporate bookings can be a goldmine for those looking to use miles. As demand from time-pressed executives goes down, airlines are more motivated to fill seats with mileage awards, especially on coveted long-haul routes like transatlantic flights. According to an industry report from late 2024, there was nearly a 20% decrease in corporate travel during the summer months, creating plenty of
Practical Sweet Spot Awards
The show must go on. After almost 3 years of Frequent Miler on the Air without missing an episode, I was determined to make it work this week despite some challenges on my end. Listen to this week’s “Giant Mailbag” stand-in for more on that and accept my apologies for unideal sound quality this week as we discuss our favorite practical sweet spots — those you can actually find available and that we have booked. Elsewhere on the blog this week, we’ve updated some excellent resources including our Marriott Bonvoy Complete Guide and some sweet spot best uses
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer July 2023 Spontaneous Escape Deal
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program every month offers a spontaneous escape promotion where you can redeem miles with discounted rates in Economy Class, Premium Economy Class and Business Class on select routes. With the summer peak season approaching, paid ticket prices are soaring. Therefore, you can simply take advantage of the discounted awards to travel to select destinations at a fraction of the cost. Every month the KrisFlyer program publishes discounted award rates as part of the ‘Spontaneous Escape‘ deal. During the promotion, you can redeem ‘Saver’ award tickets at 30% off select destinations worldwide in the Singapore Airlines
Maximizing The New Alaska Airlines Award Chart With Negative Price Stopovers (Better Than Free)
Alaska Airlines is introducing new, distance-based award charts in March. Covering this change, I noted that: And I wrote that the best value from distance-based charts often comes from maxing out distance, for instance flying West Coast – Tokyo to stay within a distance band and avoid going over… but also sometimes by booking two awards to get the pricing of two shorter distance bands rather than the combined higher-distance band. I’d like to explain this a little bit more. Here’s the award chart that covers flights between the U.S. and Asia. You’ll notice that there’s a big
Round trip biz class to Europe for 80K Korean miles; and a trick for avoiding fuel surcharges
A note from Greg The Frequent Miler: As of August 25th 2018, Korean Air will no longer be a Chase transfer partner. As a result, those of us with Chase Ultimate Rewards points need to decide soon whether to transfer points prospectively to Korean Air. Due to this impending change, I decided to re-publish this post showing how to use Korean Air miles to book round trip business class awards to Europe. This post offers a full guide to booking partner awards with Korean Air miles. It’s useful, in general, not just for business class to Europe. *Personally,
New sweet spot: Royal Air Maroc to fly to Beijing in 2020
Royal Air Maroc has announced a new route three times per week beginning January 16, 2020 from Casablanca to Beijing, China. It is not yet bookable, but this is one to keep an eye out for since Etihad Guest has such a great award chart for travel on Royal Air Maroc, with business class itineraries covering greater than 2,000 miles costing 44,000 miles. This could become the best new sweet spot in award travel. We have in the past covered the fact that Etihad Guest offers a fantastic sweet spot with Royal Air Maroc (See: Business class for 44K:
How to use your Citi ThankYou point fortune
I first published this post just two months ago, but much has changed already. Since then, Citi has removed the ability to transfer to AA (as expected), and surprised us with the addition of two hotel transfer partners! Premier and Prestige cardholders can now transfer 1 to 2 to Choice Privileges or 1 to 1 to Wyndham Rewards! I’ve updated this post accordingly to remove AA sweet-spot awards and to add Choice and Wyndham sweet-spots. One thing that hasn’t changed (at least by the time of this writing) is that Citi is still offering an 80,000 point welcome bonus