Whats a good airline route from the bay area to europe this summer? bonus: any suggestions for using chase ultimate rewards to get a better deal?
wow air sfo-kef, or ba now competing with Norwegian on oak-lgw, should be lots of seats available
Emirates
Sjc to lhr with ba. Nice route
Finnair to Helsinki, via NYC. Since you did not clarify where in Europe you want to go I assume Helsinki is good enough.
Turkish airlines, dirt cheap
Depends what you're optimizing for. Virgin Atlantic provides the best experience.
SF to Paris , Air France/Delta
For best value, transfer Chase UR to United MileagePlus. Then book SJC to Frankfurt in Lufthansa. Enter EU zone in Frankfurt and connect to other cities. That said, getting an award flight for peak season might be difficult since its only a few months away. Lookup open-jaw award flights to connect to other cities for free and sweeten it up.
Really? Sapphire Reserve UR points are worth 1.5 cents a piece, but I've been struggling to get more than about a cent per mile from United points.
In the past I have almost always redeemed Chase UR through United for exceptional value (2-3 cents a point) in economy. For business and first you can get as high as 6-10 cents sometimes. Low fuel costs and more competition by low cost carriers have driven down the fares in the last few months. If that is the case, then book it through the Chase travel booking portal and you can still get 1.5 cents a piece.