How to Fly to Germany on Points and Miles
Last year, I started getting into the credit card points/airline miles game. I learned about 10x Travel and started taking their free course (admittedly, I don’t think I finished it yet, but I have a hard time finishing lots of courses that I start lol). When Chase offered the popular Sapphire Preferred credit card with the 100,000 point sign up bonus back in 2021, I jumped on it, so I was off to a good start except for the fact that I spent about 30,000 of those points on a round-trip flight to Seattle in early 2022 (which turned out to be not a good redemption, but I didn’t know better and did not want to spend $350 on that flight at the time).
Korri and I wanted our big trip to Germany to be our first big “proper” points redemption, and we really wanted to fly international business class for the first time. (We do realize we probably won’t be able to go back to economy now, haha.) In addition, we wanted to fly domestic first class as much as we could AND book all of our flights on points if possible. It was going to be a tall order because there aren’t a lot of award flights from Boise, but we managed to book round-trip tickets between Boise and Frankfurt and spent around $300 each.
In this post, I broke down the exact award flights we flew to Germany and back, how many points each flight segment cost (and/or how much cash we paid), which credit cards we got to earn those points, and more! (Note that I’m not going to go into great detail about the credit card points “game”—I highly recommend taking the free course I linked above.) I hope this post inspires you to take advantage of credit card points and airline miles to take your travels to the next level and fly how YOU want to fly. I want to make it VERY clear that the only way we could afford to fly business was with points—we are not rich, and there is no way we’d book the cash fare.
How to Fly to Germany on Points and Miles
How to Book Cheap Business Class Flights to Europe
I’m not going to go into great detail here because it’s laid out very well in the 10x Travel free course I mentioned at the start of this post, but I wanted to make sure you understood how to book cheap business class flights to Europe. Basically: You open a credit card to earn points that you can then transfer to airline partners to book business class flights (or whatever class you so choose) and essentially travel for free or very cheap. There are a LOT of details I’m leaving out so I highly recommend taking the course and joining their free Facebook group. This is just a high level overview (and this post is not sponsored at all).
The point of the points “game” is to open new credit cards for the sole purpose of earning the sign up bonus (SUB). There are many premium travel cards from banks that give great sign up bonuses, including cards from Chase, American Express, and Capital One. You have to spend a certain amount of money on that card in a set amount of time in order to earn the SUB. Of course, you also earn points on whatever you buy with your cards, and some cards offer additional points for specific categories (groceries, gas, travel, etc.). It’s important to focus on the SUB—that’s how you earn enough points to book these high value award tickets.
In addition to opening personal credit cards, you can also open business credit cards. And most people qualify for business cards without even knowing it. If you sell your things at garage sales, that counts as a business. If you resell clothes on Poshmark or another secondhand app, that counts as a business. I have a blog with expenses, so I run a business. I was able to book these business class flights in particular because I opened two business cards and earned the SUB on both. More details on that below!
After earning the SUB, if you want to book flights, most of the time the best value you’ll get is when you transfer these points directly to airline programs. It is not recommended to use the points to book flights in each bank’s “travel portal”. The bank might tout it as a perk, because you can usually earn 3-5x points on travel booked through the portal, but you will get better value transferring these points to airlines. Trust me on this! (And check out 10x—this is where I learned everything. They also have a podcast called Takeoff!)
Award Flight from New York (JFK) to Frankfurt
Our flights to and from Frankfurt were the first flights we booked for this trip back in late January/early February. Once Korri discovered that Singapore Air flew from JFK to FRA, he was set on those flights. We knew that Singapore Air had one of the best business class experiences in the world, so it was a no brainer to book that class! (Read my full Singapore Air business class review.)
Singapore Air KrisFlyer miles needed: 81,000 (business saver fare) or 87,500 (business advantage fare)
Points transferred: 81,000 Chase UR points (Korri) or 87,000 Chase UR points (me)
Cash spent: $5.60 (taxes and fees) + $20 for 500 points = $25.60 total
Credit card used: Chase Ink Business Cash (SUB earned: 90,000 UR points after spending $6,000 in 3 months)
You probably noticed that I spent more points on this flight than Korri did. He transferred his points from Chase first and I waited to transfer mine until his points deposited in his KrisFlyer account. It took a little over 3 full days for the points to transfer (he initiated the transfer on a Thursday evening and they showed up Sunday night). I transferred mine as soon as his hit, but my transfer also took over 3 days (the longest 3 days of my life), and by the time they hit the business saver fare was on waitlist.
I decided to use that first batch of points to book the return flight and transferred another 87,000 to book the business advantage fare. You can only transfer points to KrisFlyer in multiples of 1,000, and luckily Singapore lets you top off your miles balance, so I opted to do that instead of letting 500 miles sit in my account when I wasn’t sure the next time I’d use them. (KrisFlyer miles expire 3 years after you earn/transfer them.)
As business class passengers, we could utilize Book the Cook for our meals, visit lounges, and bring two carry-on bags on the plane instead of just one.
Award Flight from Frankfurt to New York (JFK)
If you read the paragraph above, you know already that I actually booked this flight first because the outbound flight sold out of business saver fares in the time it took for my points to transfer. I’ve never been so stressed about waiting for my points to transfer—something completely out of my control! Lol.
Singapore Air KrisFlyer miles needed: 81,000 (business saver fare)
Points transferred: 81,000 Chase UR points
Cash spent: 121,52 euros/$133.71 (taxes and fees)
Credit card used: Chase Ink Business Unlimited (SUB earned: 90,000 UR points after spending $6,000 in 3 months)
It’s pretty normal for flights departing the US have fewer taxes and fees than flights departing the UK or Europe. I’m not sure what all goes into it, but don’t be alarmed if you see higher taxes and fees on your return leg. (And some airlines charge higher fees than others.)
Award Flight from Boise to New York (JFK)
After we had our flights from New York to Frankfurt booked, next it was time to figure out how we were going to get from Boise to New York and back. Our domestic airline of choice is Alaska Air. (Korri’s mom worked for Alaska for decades, and my mom recently became an Alaska flight attendant.) Being based in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska flies to a lot of destinations we go to, and they fly directly to JFK from a few different west coast cities. I checked Alaska constantly, but their points prices were super high, even in economy! I also couldn’t find options on other airlines since so few fly from Boise in the first place.
In May, I found American Air award tickets on the Alaska website. The flight itinerary was kind of horrific (3 flights to get from Boise to JFK including a red-eye), but two of the three flights were in first class, and the miles needed for American first class is 25,000 miles (the price for economy is 12,500 miles). I couldn’t even find economy tickets on Alaska for less than 30,000 miles! We decided to book this itinerary and kept watching the Alaska flights to see if they would come down in price. They never did, lol.
Our itinerary took us from Boise to Seattle on Alaska (operated by Horizon; economy), Seattle to Columbus on Alaska (overnight flight; first class), and then Columbus to JFK on American (operated by Republic; first class). Luckily we had no issues and we arrived about 11 hours before our Singapore Air flight departed JFK for Frankfurt. We had a short layover in Seattle and used Korri’s Priority Pass (a benefit through his Chase Sapphire Reserve) to buy dinner to bring on the plane since they didn’t sell food. It was our first time in Columbus, and the airport is annoying; the terminals aren’t connected airside so we had to chug our waters and go through security again!
Alaska Air Mileage Plan miles needed: 25,000 (AA first class fare)
Points transferred: None
Cash spent: $18.10 (taxes and fees)
Credit card used: Alaska Airlines Visa Signature (SUB: 40,000 Alaska miles after spending $3,000 in 3 months + $100 statement credit)
You’ll find that the Alaska Air card is way down on 10x’s recommended list of cards. I got this card before I got into points and miles. I’m glad I have it because we fly Alaska so frequently, and one of the perks is a one-time annual companion fare. That said, I’ve never actually used my companion fare! We’ve used Korri’s but not mine (then again, we just started traveling again since COVID). Alaska can be a tough airline program to earn miles if you don’t get a card because the points from the big banks don’t transfer directly to Alaska, but I actually have earned the majority of my Alaska miles by shopping through their portal. That said, you can book flights on Alaska through their One World partners, including American.
Cheap Flight from New York (LGA) to Boise
The very last flight segment we had to figure out was how to get home from New York! In June, Southwest had a 40% off base fare sale, and flights from New York (LaGuardia) to Boise via Denver were only $133.27 each way including taxes and fees. That price is basically unheard of… We can’t even get to Seattle for that price half the time! We jumped on that deal because it was so good. It would have been an even better deal had we paid with points (Chase transfers 1:1) and/or if we had a Companion Pass. That’s next on my list to get for 2024 and 2025!
Total Points Used + Cash Spent
If you haven’t been doing the math, here’s the total number of points I used and cash I spent for our round trip flights from Boise to Frankfurt! While I spent more miles on our business class flights than others in the points and miles world (lots of folks find that spending 80k points for business to be too high), I’m completely happy with my first proper points redemption. I never would have paid the cash price for those tickets, so it was amazing we could fly comfortably for close to nothing in cash!
Total points spent: 193,000 (25,000 Alaska Air Mileage Plan miles + 168,000 Chase UR points transferred to Singapore Air KrisFlyer)
Total cash spent: $310.68 (Korri spent $290)
Alternative Way to Book Singapore Air Award Tickets
Singapore Air is a member of Star Alliance, and you can actually book Singapore Air business class award tickets through Air Canada’s Aeroplan program for 60,000 points when available (which also transfers 1:1 from Chase). If there is a Chase transfer bonus going on, it would cost you even fewer points than that! We checked Aeroplan for award tickets on our flights and they weren’t available, unfortunately…or maybe fortunately? I’m kinda glad they weren’t available because we had already booked our flights, lol. Be sure to make your Aeroplan account and check there first before transferring points to KrisFlyer!
Whew! This post ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be, haha. 😆 I hope you found it helpful to read how we booked our flights and inspired you to take advantage of points and miles to fly in style on your next trip to Germany or other parts of Europe! I’m so excited for our future flights on points, whatever they may end up being. Hit me up in the comments if you have any questions!