Unlocking Italy: Repositioning for Unbeatable Travel Deals

How we booked business class tickets one way for only 55K points

Now that I figured out how to look for deals on Air France from Seattle to Europe, how about checking out deals to Italy?

Florence was a city we really wanted to visit and my wife is a teacher so we had to check for flights during spring break which for us is in April. If you saw blog post about my 20K I found from Seattle to Madrid, I was using that is the baseline for how much points it would cost to fly to Europe. Since we booked a family trip in February of 2024, my wife and I wanted to do a trip to Europe just us two.

I saw some deals from Seattle to Florence for around 35K one way and leaving Sunday Aril 7th 2024. That wasn’t too bad considering it was spring break, but I was still searching.

I randomly checked flights out of New Yor since I know that is a major Hub with lots of flights to Europe. I was shocked to see flights for April 7th for as low as 15K from NYC to Florence! Now that is a deal! What if I toggle the filter for Business class? 55K one way plus $209 for taxes & fees!

We booked it!

If you look on Air France and try to book with $ instead, business class one way is going for $2,599 for the same flight! 55K travel points is equivalent to $550!

We live in Seattle so we still need to find flights from Seattle to NYC. I had some Alaska Airlines miles and checked some flight on that app. I was able to find a red eye for 12,000 Miles one way, I had enough miles to cover both of us.

How about for the return flight home? We could have flown back from Florence to Seattle for about 27K. We watched that show on HBO “My Brilliant Best Friend” which was based in Naples and we wanted to also check out the Amalfi coast. I was able to find us a flight from Naples to Seattle for 26K miles. We plan to take the train down from Florence to Naples and take a ferry over to Capri or Positano