$405+ Roundtrips From Six US Cities to Amsterdam

MileValue is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.

Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.

I tweeted this deal first from @MileValueAlerts. Follow @MileValueAlerts on Twitter and follow these directions to get a text message every time I tweet from that account. I tweet from @MileValueAlerts only a few times a month because it is designed to be used only for the best and most limited-time deals–like mistake fares–so that you aren’t bombarded by text messages.

American Airlines is offering roundtrip economy flights starting at $400 from numerous cities in the United States to Amsterdam. Available travel dates span from the mid November of this year through April 2018. Many of the flights have a connection in Philadelphia.

Contents

1. What city pairs are available?
2. When are the cheap fares?
3. Mileage Earning
4. Baggage Allowance
5. Best Credit Card to Buy the Ticket

Available City Pairs

You’ll find the the cheap fares to the Netherlands from…

• Los Angeles (starting at $405)
• Atlanta (starting at $405)
• Boston (starting at $412)
• Fort Lauderdale (starting at $416)
• Seattle (starting at $415)
• New York City (starting at $422)

When are the cheap fares?

The easiest place to find these fares is on Google Flights. Depending on the city, available travel dates span from mid November through April. Secret Flying has many example travel dates listed that they have found.

I brought up the following using Google Flights Flexible dates tool to show prices of possible weeklong trips.

You can’t purchase tickets directly on Google Flights, but after finding the fare you’ll be given links to follow for purchase through the airline. You may find slightly cheaper fares on Momondo.com, but keep in mind you may not receive the same kind of customer service as you would from an airline directly in the case of intervening circumstances.

Mileage Earning

You need to know the fare class when looking up how many redeemable miles cash flights earn, which you can find using ITA Matrix. The American Airlines flight is in fare class O.

Assuming you have no status, you’ll earn 5 American Airlines miles per dollar spent. For this ticket that means you’ll earn between 2,025 and 2,110 American Airlines miles, depending on which route you fly.

But you don’t have to credit your butt-in-seat miles to AAdvantage. Here’s how the process of crediting to a partner works.

If you opted to credit to Alaska Airlines, for example, you’d earn around 3,057 Alaska miles flying from Seattle to Amsterdam roundtrip. Wheretocredit.com is also a valuable tool to bookmark for help figuring out where to credit your redeemable miles earned for a cash ticket.

Baggage Allowance

You get a free personal item and free carry on, as well as one free checked bag up to 50 pounds each.

Best Way to Buy the Ticket

What card you should buy this ticket with depends on your priorities.

• If you want it to be free, put it on whatever card you have travel statement credits for, like the Sapphire Reserve or Citi Prestige–or open a Barclaycard Arrival Plus. The card comes with 40,000 Arrival miles after spending $3,000 on the card in the first 90 days. Arrival miles can be redeemed for 1 cent each toward any travel expense (even travel expenses used to meet your minimum spending requirement for the bonus), so the bonus alone will more than cover this flight (and still leave you about $490 in travel statement credits).
• If you’re more concerned with travel insurance, check out our series on the travel protection benefits of popular rewards cards.
• If you’re more concerned with earning rewards (although, this probably should’t be your top priority since the ticket is quite cheap) check out the Best Credit Card to Buy Airfare.

Credit card links have been removed from posts and added to the menu bar at the top of every page of MileValue under the heading Top Travel Credit Cards.

Hat Tip Secret Flying