This was a special birthday trip—the kind where I stop worrying about saving miles and finally give myself permission to use them.
That’s not how I usually plan trips. Most of the time, I’m trying to maximize every point and make the numbers work. But this time, the focus was on the trip itself. I wanted to find the best flights for our destination, even if it meant spending more miles than I normally would.
Outbound: Lufthansa Business Class (Or Maybe Not)
The first flight of the trip was supposed to be in business class on Lufthansa, booked using points through Air Canada Aeroplan. I found business-class award space from Washington Dulles to Munich, with a connecting flight to Hamburg, for 70,000 Aeroplan miles plus about 110 CAD in taxes and fees.
This was exactly the kind of redemption I had in mind when planning this trip. Instead of trying to find the absolute cheapest award, I focused on finding something that fit our schedule and made the journey part of the experience.
To get to Washington, DC, we booked a positioning flight on United Airlines. I booked it during a window where I could double-dip my credit from the IHG Premier card, saving $50 on the cash fare.
Up until departure, everything looked like it was going to work exactly as planned.
Then Lufthansa’s labor issues started making headlines.
It didn’t take long for that to become our problem.
Instead of that carefully planned business class flight, we ended up doing something very different—I’ll get into all the details in another post. For now, let’s just say we got an unexpected review of what it’s like to fly economy class on United to Frankfurt.
Our Intra-Europe Flight
While we did most of our traveling in Germany and Austria by train, we did need to take one intra-Europe flight—from Frankfurt to Vienna.
We flew this segment on Austrian Airlines, which I booked through United Airlines MileagePlus for 6,000 miles + $74 per ticket. I’ve already written about why I used miles for this flight, even with the relatively high copay.
A Quick Stop in London
While we could have flown home directly from Austria, we decided to stop in London on the way back to catch a show before heading home.
I booked us on British Airways from Salzburg to London for 9,750 Avios + $1 per ticket. It was a short flight, but a great way to position ourselves for the trip home while adding something extra to the itinerary.
Going with Our Usual Flight Home
For our flight from London to Orlando, we went with our usual Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy option. On this trip, we also got to experience our first flight on the Airbus A350-1000, which was a nice upgrade from the aircraft we’ve flown on this route before.
This segment cost 82,000 Virgin Points plus £467.69 in taxes and fees. It’s not the cheapest redemption, but for a comfortable ride home—and a product we already know we like—it was an easy choice.
Final Thought
Looking back, this trip was a good reminder that the flights aren’t the reason we travel. As my wife likes to say, the plane is just what gets us from point A to point B.
I had it all lined up—lie-flat business-class seats across the Atlantic and an easy connection to Hamburg. Instead, we ended up sitting four-across in the middle of an economy cabin, followed by a four-hour train ride, just to reach our starting point.
Not exactly what I had planned.
But we got there. And once the trip actually started, none of that mattered nearly as much as I thought it would.
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