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The best value flight between the United States and Europe is American Airlines’ daily 777-300ER flight from Los Angeles to London.
The 10hr40min flight east features fully flat beds in Business Class for 50k American Airlines miles each way, and American’s newest First Class product for 62,500 miles each way.
Considering that Delta now charges 125k miles for roundtrip business class awards to Europe and United charges 115-140k for a roundtrip business class award and 160k-220k for a roundtrip first class award to Europe, American’s prices are a steal!
For a great hard product, and west-coast-to-Europe flights, you can’t beat American’s Los Angeles to London route’s Saver prices.
Award Availability
What is the award availability in business class and first class on American’s direct flight from Los Angeles to London and back?
When the 777-300ER, American’s newest plane, was loaded into the schedule last year on the route, award availability was incredible in all three cabins, and I was telling everyone to book it.
Unfortunately, now award space is very hard to find.
All calendars display results for a one passenger search on the direct American Airlines flights between Los Angeles and London.
There are a handful of days with MileSAAver award space in First Class from Los Angeles to London in May and June for one passenger for 62,500 miles.
Next January and February, there are a few days with Business and one day with First Class award space.
From London to Los Angeles, the premium cabin award space picture is worse. I see only one day in the next 11 months with Saver award space in a premium cabin–January 10, 2015 in First Class.
It should be noted that economy award space in both directions on the route is solid for many months at a time and costs only 20k miles each way from October 15 to May 15 and 30k miles each way during the rest of the year.
Recap
It is disappointing to see how much award space has deteriorated on American’s Los Angeles <-> London flight since last year. At the moment, it’s nearly impossible to take advantage of the 50k and 62,500 mile price points for the excellent Business and First Class cabins.
If you want to fly from the west coast to Europe with miles, consider connections on the east coast or in Canada. And if you’re running into trouble finding any award space, hire the MileValue Award Booking Service to book your trip for you!
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel Portal and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
Editorial Disclaimer: The editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuers, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuers.
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You think that’s a better value than BOS-DUB for 25K Avios?? Why?
11 hrs of flat bed versus six of seat (I don’t like the term “angled lie flat”). Plus this flight can be used at the 50k/62.5k level if you live in HNL, PHX, SFO, etc etc while adding segments to BOS-DUB costs more Avios. Both are great deals.
This is the modern day “yes ,we have no bananas,we have no bananas today”. Miles are an unregulated jungle ,and getting worse every day.
What we need is more consolidation of the airlines. Soon our miles will be as worthwhile as the Mark was in 1923.
This isn’t really surprising…AA has invested a lot in these new planes and they want to sell premiums tickets to revenue customers rather than people who got a credit card bonus.
As usual, you miss the point (or conveniently gloss over it). The point is not that it’s hard to find business class seats on the AA nonstop from LAX to LHR. The point is that American miles are uterly worthless for premium cabin travel (at least to Europe), period. They have simply stopped making ANY seats available at the Saver level for premium cabins. It’s laughable that everyone is gushing about the current Citi AA 100K sign up bonus – because you’re going to need a lot more miles than you think in order to get a business class seat. Planning to fly AA to London? Plan to pay double or triple, and hope you can find seats even at those inflated prices.
Gee, who could have possibly imagined that, with the airlines handing out buckets of FF miles like halloween candy, and bloggers endlessly flogging mega-credit card sign-ups, all those miles have become worthless? What a shock! What happened to my free tickets in first class to Bora Bora?
[…] I wrote that The Best Value Flight Across the Atlantic Has Almost No Premium Award Space. I was referring to American Airlines’ Los Angeles <-> London route as the best value […]