71. Horses, Zebras, and Unicorns: Business Class Award Flight Edition (Part 1)

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Point Me to First Class podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about horses, zebras, and unicorns, business class award flight edition. Now, if you're wondering what the hell are horses, zebras, and unicorns in the points travel world, I am going to tell you. 

First, it's important that you understand that this is a totally made-up construct of mine that's a conflation of a medicine reference and a points travel reference. But I'm going to try to pull it all together into something that I hope makes sense and, of course, might actually be useful for you all. 

So let me explain the references first. During my medical school education and residency training, there was a saying that was really common to hear from more experienced residents or attendings when you were discussing a case and coming up with potential diagnoses for a specific patient based on their constellation of symptoms and findings.

That was, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Basically what that meant was that when you were considering all the potential diagnoses that could explain a patient's presentation, common things are common. So make sure to start your differential diagnosis with the diseases or conditions that are most commonly seen and are the most likely diagnosis for the patient. When you hear hoofbeats, common things being common, think horses, not zebras. 

Like a kid comes in for evaluation of a cough. Think horses, not zebras. That cough is much more likely to be symptomatic of common things like allergies, asthma, or a respiratory infection than something incredibly rare like mucoepidermoid carcinoma. Zebras are not impossible. They're just far less common than horses. 

Now this is obviously a pretty Eurocentric construct as much of Western allopathic medicine is because certainly there are parts of the world where zebras are more common than horses. But for the sake of today's discussion, let's just assume you're in a geographic location where horses are more common than zebras. 

So let's switch over to the world of points travel now. If you follow any points travel blogs or are signed up for any of the flight award subscription services out there, you might be familiar with the concept of a unicorn award. These are the award flights that are so rare they might as well be magical, mythical creatures because your chances of seeing one are slim to nonexistent. 

The longer that I've been in the points travel hobby, the more I've come to see that award flights, especially long haul business class award flights, are not all created equal in terms of how easy it is to find and book them. Instead, premium cabin award flights are like horses, zebras, and unicorns. Some are very, very common, easy to find, and easy to book. Others are unicorns that are rarely seen, can be impossible to predict, but are beautiful and magical nonetheless. Other business class award flights fall somewhere in between the two. 

By the end of this podcast series, you are going to have a much better idea of which award flights are horses, which are zebras, and which are unicorns. The reason that I wanted to talk about this is because a lot of times I see people trying to redeem their points for the first time, not realizing that some premium cabin awards are much more likely to be available than others. It can be incredibly discouraging to have been saving up points, especially for a long time, and then feel like it's impossible to use them because you can't find the flights that you want to book. 

When this happens, it can be really easy to think that points don't work or that it's not worth it to earn points and try to use them. But sometimes what is happening is that someone is trying to book a unicorn award flight instead of a horse or a zebra. They're not doing anything wrong in their award search, and their points definitely are not useless. They just don't realize that all award flights aren't necessarily horses. 

Now I want folks to get as much use and value from their points as possible. I think that there's a much higher likelihood of that happening once you have a sense of what award flights are easier to find in book versus which ones are just much more rare to begin with. That is what we are going to be diving into in this two part podcast series. 

You're going to learn the characteristics of each type of flight, hear specific examples of business class award flights that are horses, zebras, and unicorns, and walk away with an understanding of how to put yourself in the best position to book each type of award. My hope is that you are going to be able to use today's and next week's episodes in your award travel planning to prioritize which award flights you want to try to book and help you understand what to take into consideration if a unicorn ward is on your travel wish list.

In this series, I am going to focus specifically on business class award flights, and I'm not going to be talking about economy award flights for a couple of reasons. First, business class award flights can be more challenging to find than economy award flights since there just tends to be far fewer premium cabin awards available to begin with. So this is where you're more likely to have difficulty finding award space. 

The reality is that it can be tricky to find premium cabin awards on some routes and that the more premium cabin award tickets you're looking to book on one single flight, the harder it can be to find them. But I want to help you focus your searches to increase the chances that you can find great business class award availability where it's the most likely to exist. 

Second, not everybody who collects points wants to fly premium cabins, but a lot of people do. So there's usually a lot of interest in learning about these types of redemptions. Third, oftentimes you can get outsized value from your points when you use them for premium cabin award flights compared to economy award flights. 

Here's what I mean. Oftentimes the cash price difference between an economy and a business class flight can be significant. For long haul flights, a business class ticket can sometimes cost three or four times as much as an economy ticket or even more. But when you have points, you can sometimes find business class award flights that might only cost twice as many points as an economy class award flight instead of the triple or quadrupled cash price difference that you can see between economy and business class flights. 

Right before I jumped on to record this podcast, I ran just a really quick award search and found a direct one-way flight from Newark to Geneva, Switzerland on United Airlines. An economy ticket on that flight is pricing out at $703, but a business class ticket on that same flight would cost a little over $5,300. So business class on this specific flight will cost more than seven times the cost of an economy ticket.

But, like I said, when you're using points, you don't necessarily need seven times the number of points to book business class. United is offering this particular flight for 65,000 points to fly in economy but 80,000 points to fly in business class. Now I don't know a lot of people who would get excited about having to pay an extra $4,600 in cash to fly business class, but using just 15,000 extra points to fly business instead of economy on a transatlantic flight would be a pretty easy decision for me personally. 

This is kind of an extreme example just to illustrate my point, not the least of which is because I would argue that 65,000 points is not really a competitive points price for an economy award flight, but it does show that the points price for award flights aren't always directly tied to the cash cost of the flight. So there are a lot of great opportunities to book business class awards for a smaller difference in points than you would see between the cash cost of an economy versus business class flight. 

Here's one more example to show you what this could look like. In my search, I also came across a direct round trip flight from Salt Lake city to Amsterdam on KLM airlines. That flight could be booked for 40,000 points in economy or a hundred thousand points in business class round trip. So the business class flight costs 2.5 times as many points as the economy flight. 

But when you look at the cash cost of the same exact flight, an economy ticket is pricing out at $888 and a business class ticket is pricing out at $3,200, meaning that the business class flight costs 3.6 times as much as the economy flight when booking in cash. Again, this example just shows that you can see that the business class award flight requires comparatively fewer points to book than the business class cash flight requires compared to the economy cash flight. 

I just want to reiterate that there are lots of great reasons to book economy award flights using points. So please don't think that just because I'm focusing on business class flights in this particular episode means that you can't find amazing points deals in economy or that you shouldn't use your points that way if that is what works best for you.

One final caveat before we start looking at which award flights are horses, zebras, and unicorns is that award availability does fluctuate over time. Meaning that just because a particular award flight is relatively easy to find right now doesn't necessarily guarantee that that is always going to be the case. So if you're listening to this episode six months or two years after it airs, everything that I talk about today might not still hold true. The flights covered today are representative of award trends that I've been seeing for at least the past couple of months, if not longer. 

Finally, the award flights that I'm going to be covering in this week and next week's episodes are ones that are readily bookable to or from North America. There are some great examples of fantastic premium cabin awards between like Asia and the middle East or other regions of the world. But since the vast majority of listeners of this podcast are based in North America, I'm going to be focusing on award flights in this region. 

Now that that is out of the way, here are some of my favorite business class award flights that I consider to be horses. This group of awards can also be thought of as business class awards that are actually bookable. In no particular order if you are looking for business class award flights, even for multiple people on the same flight, these five airline programs have the highest likelihood of your being able to find solid award availability. Air France KLM Flying Blue, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, specifically their Fifth Freedom Flights and the Miles & More program. 

Now here's a bit more about what makes each of these programs business class award horses. Starting with the Air France KLM Flying Blue program. This is my go-to frequent flyer program when looking for award flights to Europe and one that I highly recommend that you search as well. Flying Blue is such a strong award program for business class bookings for five main reasons. 

First between Air France and KLM airlines, Flying Blue services almost 30 North American airports, including the large international hubs that you're probably already familiar with as well as comparatively smaller airports, including airports like San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, and Las Vegas. 

The sheer size of the route network means that not only is there a good chance that an airport near you has access to Air France or KLM flights, but these airlines also operate over 200 flights weekly from North America to Europe. So there are tons of potential award flights available. 

Not only does Flying Blue have an extensive route network to North America, but they also have great business class availability on their flights that is almost unparalleled by any other frequent flyer program. You can commonly find at least four business class awards on Flying Blue itineraries. It's not out of the question to see flights that have six, seven, or even eight business class awards bookable. This truly sets Flying Blue apart as an amazing airline for premium cabin award space.

Now it's one thing to have a lot of award space available, but it's another for it to be priced at a rate that's actually reasonable. Now I don't think that too many of us care very much about a ton of premium cabin award space being bookable if that award space is priced so outrageously high that no one would realistically consider booking it.

Case in point, Etihad Airways, theoretically, has pretty good business class award availability on many of its flights from the States to its hub in Abu Dhabi and beyond. But it's not unusual to see those flights getting priced at 500,000 points one way per person in business class, which frankly is a joke. It's one thing for an airline to have great business class availability, but what makes it a strong award booking option is when those flights are actually priced reasonably enough that you would want to book them. 

With business class awards starting at 50,000 points per person one way, Flying Blue knocks it out of the park. Now Flying Blue does price their awards dynamically, which means that you are not always going to find such a great rate on business class award flights, but it's not at all unusual to find business class awards priced at between 50,000 to 78,000 points per person one way, which I think is a great rate. 

Of course, Flying Blue is a fantastic option for getting from North America to Europe or vice versa, but Air France and KLM also have route networks that extend from their hubs beyond Europe to destinations in North, East, West, and South Africa and India and other places. From Marrakesh to Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Zanzibar, Cape Town, Johannesburg, or other airports, don't forget about Flying Blue if you want to book business class for your next trip. 

Finally, Flying Blue is one of the few airline loyalty programs that is a direct transfer partner of all five of the major transferable points currencies. This means that whether you have Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, or Bilt Points, you can move any or all of those points into your Flying Blue frequent flyer account. 

To make it even better, it's not uncommon to see transfer bonuses from the transferable points currencies to Flying Blue, making it an even better deal to book premium cabin flights using points. For all of these reasons, I personally think that Flying Blue cannot be beat for the ease of finding and booking business class award flights, but luckily it's not the only airline loyalty program that I consider to be a horse. 

Next up is Singapore Airlines, the much lauded airline based in, not shockingly, Singapore that is famous for its world-class service and fantastic hard product. From its hub in Singapore, Singapore Airlines directly services Seattle, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Newark, and JFK airports in the U.S. where one way business class flights will cost anywhere between around 107,000 and 150,000 points per person one way. 

For an even better deal, you can grab a business class award on one of Singapore's Fifth Freedom flights for just 81,000 to 85,000 points per person, one way. For those of you not familiar with Fifth Freedom routes, these refer to itineraries operated by an airline that does not start or end in the airlines hub airport. In the case of Singapore Airlines, it operates two Fifth Freedom flights from the U.S. to Europe, including a flight from Houston to Manchester and a flight from JFK to Frankfurt.

Regardless of whether you're heading to Singapore and beyond or going the other direction and grabbing one of their Fifth Freedom flights to Europe, what makes Singapore Airlines land squarely in the horse category of booking business class award flights is that it offers great availability, again, even for multiple passengers. As an added bonus, Singapore is a direct transfer partner of four of the five major transferable points currencies, making it very easy to access points for one of their flights. 

Now the next two airline programs that are also business class award horses are ones that I'm going to lump together because they share some similarities, and those are British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Both BA and Virgin are based in the UK with their hubs located at London Heathrow airport. Virgin has a solid route network to the U.S. servicing about 11 airports on the East and West coast and the Southeast. Notably Virgin flies to both Orlando and Tampa airports in Florida in addition to Miami, making this a really useful program for folks located near those airports. 

While I think Virgin has a good route network to the U.S., it can't actually compare to British Airways, which flies to nearly 30 airports between the U.S. and Canada. One of the unique aspects of the BA route network to the U.S. is that several smaller airport markets are served with direct flights to London, including Portland, Oregon, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Austin, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Nashville, Tampa, and Orlando. Now for folks who are accustomed to having to position to a larger international hub airport in order to book award flights to Europe, BA offers a fantastic option for direct flights from both large and some medium sized airports in the States.

When it comes to award availability, both Virgin and BA are unique in that they guarantee a minimum number of business class seats that will be released on all long haul flights. This is really unusual, although a fantastic aspect of both of these loyalty programs, since the vast majority of frequent flyer programs do not guarantee premium cabin awards will be available on all of their flights, much less more than one. 

While Virgin Atlantic guarantees to business class award seats will be available on each of its long haul flights, British Airways has them beat with their guarantee that for business class award seats will be available on all of their long haul flights. 

This means that especially if you're able to book your flights in advance when BA opens its booking calendar, you're all but assured to find multiple business class award seats available to book. Again, that is virtually unheard of in the award travel space. Now that British Airways is updating its business class cabins, that's a product that you might actually really, really enjoy flying. 

Not only do Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have great business class award availability, but the points prices for their award flights are actually pretty reasonable too. You can book a business class award flight on a Virgin flight from the East coast for as few as 48,000 points per person one way while a one way flight from the West coast is going to cost a little bit higher at about 68,000 points per person. 

British Airways business class award flights are going to run you more points than booking Virgin Atlantic business class awards, ranging from around 80,000 points per person one way from the East coast up to about a hundred thousand points per person one way from the West coast. Again, this is in business class.

Now I don't think that anyone is going to claim that a hundred thousand points per person for a one way business class flight to Europe is setting any records as an outrageous deal. But if you're traveling from the West coast, being able to secure a direct nonstop business class award ticket on a flight that can run 10 to 11 hours may justify paying that points price. 

That becomes even more feasible when you take into consideration that both Virgin and BA often have transfer bonuses from various transferable points currencies, which can drive the price of an award flight down to then a very reasonable level. As an added bonus, both Virgin and BA are transfer partners of multiple transferable points currencies. You can transfer all of the five major points currencies to Virgin and three points currencies to BA, including Amex, Chase, and Capital One points. 

Now the elephant in the room when it comes to considering word flights on both BA and Virgin, and arguably the largest downside to using these programs to book awards is that both of these airlines have astronomical taxes, fees, and surcharges that you're going to have to pay as an out of pocket cash cost, even on flights booked using points.

When I say astronomical, I mean that you should expect to pay anywhere between $500 upwards of a thousand dollars per person for a one way business class award flight. These are some of the highest fees that you're going to see on business class award flights from any program and maybe enough to dissuade you entirely from looking at Virgin or British Airways for your next flight. 

Now, while I would much rather not pay a billion dollars in fees to book an award flight, the silver lining here, if there is one, is that most other folks don't want to pay those either. That means that there is usually much less competition to book business class award tickets on Virgin and BA than other airlines. So these can be great backup options to have in case you can't find great award flights through other booking programs.

These flights can also work if you've already budgeted a certain amount of cash that you are willing and able to pay, and the fees on these airlines don't exceed that. For example, if you had already planned to spend $1,500 on a round trip economy ticket just booked in cash then maybe you're perfectly happy to book a business class award flight for the same out of pocket cash cost in addition to using points so that you can enjoy a higher class of service on your flight. 

Now rounding out the five airlines with great business class award availability to fall in the horse category of award flights is Emirates, an extremely popular airline based in Dubai. Now, similarly to Virgin Atlantic and BA, Emirates also, unfortunately, charges sometimes atrocious fees on many of its business class award flights. That will likely discourage most award travelers from seriously considering booking their flights.

But two glaring exceptions and the reason that I'm including Emirates in this list of great programs for booking business class award flights are the Fifth Freedom flights that Emirates operates from the U.S. to Europe. Now, just like you heard earlier in the episode with Singapore airlines, Emirates also operates a few Fifth Freedom flights that bypass their Dubai hub entirely. These flights are very reasonably priced, both in terms of their points price and the out of pocket cash costs you will pay on an award ticket for taxes and fees. 

The two fifth freedom flights that Emirates operates between the U.S. are a direct flight from Newark to Athens and a direct flight from JFK airport to Milan. That's it. Just those two specific routes. Don't go searching for Dallas to Milan on Emirates or Athens to Boston on Emirates. You're not going to find it. These routes are seriously just Newark to Athens and Athens to Newark and JFK to Milan and Milan to JFK. You can book them one way or as roundtrip award flights.

Despite their obvious limitation in terms of the number of routes available, the Emirates Fifth Freedom flights still deserve a spot as one of the easiest premium cabin award flights to book because availability on these routes tends to be amazing. It is not unheard of to find four to seven business class tickets bookable using points on either of these flights, which is absolutely not the norm for most frequent flyer programs. 

Not only that, but at 87,000 points one way per person and around just a hundred dollars in taxes and fees, these award flights are priced really well to fly direct between the East coast and Europe. Earning enough points to grab a bunch of business class awards on an Emirates Fifth Freedom flight should be easy considering that Emirates is a transfer partner of all five major transferable points currencies. So while this example is definitely more limited in terms of route options than the other airlines in this category, it does remain a fantastic option to easily book multiple business class award flights for a reasonable points and cash cost. 

Now I know that I said at the beginning of this episode that there were five main airlines that all offer great business class award availability, but I want to throw in one final loyalty program as an honorable mention, and that is the Miles & More program. 

I'm not going to go into too much detail about that program on this episode though because I talked about it extensively on podcast episode number 59, which I highly recommend that you check out if you haven't had a chance to hear it yet. If you do, you will learn why the Miles & More program is my second favorite loyalty program for securing multiple business class award tickets on flights to Europe.

The main reason that this program only gets an honorable mention here is because it is much more difficult to acquire a significant number of miles in the Miles & More program than all of the other airlines that I've mentioned today, because the Miles & More program is not a transfer partner of any of the major transferable points currencies, unlike all of the other airlines mentioned today. 

But if you are in a position to earn Miles & More miles, either from booking paid cash flights with their airline partners, having a Miles & More credit card that you can put significant spend on, or by outright purchasing miles through promotions that effectively put them on sale then this loyalty program offers tremendous options for booking multiple premium cabin award flights fairly easily. 

So there you have it everybody. Those are the five plus one airline loyalty programs that top the list when it comes to routinely offering multiple business class award tickets that are relatively straightforward to find and book using points. 

What all of these examples have in common and why they all landed in the horse category of award flights is that they share the following three features. First, the majority of these airlines have great availability in terms of offering many potential flight routes that you can book with points, a high likelihood of not only finding one or two business class awards on a flight, but a high likelihood of finding multiple three, four, even more business class award tickets on an individual flight across a good range of dates. That is really, really unusual in the award travel world. 

Second, all of these airlines are transfer partners of at least three of the major transferable points currencies with some being transfer partners of four or all five points currencies, making them all very accessible to most points earners. Finally, all of these loyalty programs have pretty user-friendly websites for searching for award availability. Because it's kind of irrelevant if our program has great business class award flights if they're impossible to find. All of the airlines mentioned today offer flight search platforms that can be navigated even by beginners to points travel.

One final thing to note about the airline programs mentioned today is that they don't all offer the absolute lowest points price possible for business class award flights. You can likely find examples of individual award flights price cheaper than the ones that I mentioned today.

But if you're looking for airlines that offer reliable business class award availability, again, especially for multiple people to a broad range of North American airports that you can find without needing an advanced degree in running award searches then I don't think the airlines discussed today can be beat. 

For those of you who have tried to book multiple business class award tickets before and have been unsuccessful, if you're discouraged because your home airport is not JFK or SFO, or if you've been dissuaded from even trying to look for business class award flights because you've been told it's impossible to find them, I hope that today's episode has been helpful in pointing you towards business class award flights that are actually bookable using points. 

I've done my best to offer information that can be broadly applicable, but of course there's no way on a single podcast episode for me to cover all potential permutations of flight routes and points booking possibilities to personalize this information for every individual listener. But that's exactly what I do inside of my award travel program, Points Made Easy, which will be opening for enrollment in just a few days on July 13th, 2024. 

Points Made Easy not only teaches you the most high yield methods for earning as many points as possible for your expenses, but also walks you through how to use those points for wish list travel experiences, like flying your family business class to your dream destination, whether that's Patagonia or the Maldives. It's where you can get personalized hands-on support to build your best rewards credit card portfolio and get step-by-step award search tutorials so you know how to actually redeem your points once you've earned them.

You can save your spot on the waitlist for Points Made Easy by visiting www.pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy. That's www.pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy. If you liked this episode, be sure to join me here next week for part two of this series of the horses, zebras, and unicorns business class award flights. 

We're going to be diving into which business class awards are tougher to find and book but still possible compared to the horses and which business class awards are so rare they might as well be unicorns. You will walk away from that episode, not only understanding what awards fall into each booking category, but also knowing how to put yourself in the best position possible to book these more elusive awards if they happen to top your travel wish list. 

I hope you all enjoyed today's episode, and I will see you back here again next week for the second half of the horses, zebras, and unicorn series. Have a great week everybody. 

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.