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I posted a little earlier about the superb fares that TAP Portugal is currently offering between Copenhagen and Miami, New York and Boston. These are great deals, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t push a little further for even better value!

1) Cashback

First things first, TopCashback.com is offering $12.80:

Note that this is the US Topcashback site, not the UK one, so you will need to register here. I couldn’t see any UK cashback options for TAP Portugal unfortunately.

For the very cheap one-way Economy flights, that works out at about 8% back!

2) Free stopover

TAP Portugal allows you to have a free stopover in Lisbon (or Porto) for up to 3 days when booking a Return flight. You can only stopover on either the outbound or inbound – not both.

It’s surprisingly easy to build in a stopover on the TAP website – just click on the “stopover” button on the homepage and search from there:

Stopovers are allowed whether you are travelling Business Class or Economy, and the fare class doesn’t matter either (cheapest promo Economy is absolutely fine!).

Lisbon is a wonderful place to spend a few days, so this is a valuable addition – assuming you have enough holiday time to stop off and take advantage.

If you only want to book a one-way flight you can’t include a proper stopover, but what you can do is select flight times with as close to a 24 hour connection in Lisbon as possible – 21 hours isn’t bad:

3) Book Economy in one direction and Business Class in the other direction

To do this, you need to search on the TAP Portugal site as if you were booking a Return as normal (NOT two one-ways!).

Flying to the East Coast of the USA from Europe (particularly the North) doesn’t take very long really (6-8 hours), and the flights are in the daytime. Business Class on a relatively short daytime flight is fun, but Economy is fine (for me) too. Heading back to Europe though, the flights are almost always overnight and being able to to lie down (even if it’s only for a couple of hours) can make a big difference in terms of comfort.

The value you can get by doing this is incredible!

Economy from Copenhagen to New York, Business Class from New York to Copenhagen: £591.80

Economy from Copenhagen to Miami, Business Class from Miami to Copenhagen: £632.80

I haven’t worked out how to include a stopover in Lisbon when mixing cabins online, but imagine it would be possible if you called TAP Portugal.

4) Save money with less convenient routing

If you really want to travel Business Class in both directions, you can bring the cost of a Return Business Class flight from Copenhagen to New York down a bit by choosing to fly back via Boston:

7379 Danish Krona is equivalent to about £845, which is ~£100 cheaper than flying back direct from New York was on the same dates.

5) Credit the flights smartly

Craig wrote a great post today on why you should consider crediting flights to more ‘exotic’ partners.

The exact fare class matters a lot when it comes to how many Miles different partners offer, so make sure to check carefully. I couldn’t find the info on the TAP website, but Expedia was more helpful (just make sure you are searching the exact same flights and the price is the same as what the TAP website says):

The examples I checked were all in ‘J’ Class which is great, because you can earn a stack of Miles!

The full list is on WhereToCredit here. Aegean MilesBonus (particularly interesting if you want Star Alliance Gold status!), Air Canada Aeroplan, and Miles&More all offer 200% of flown Miles. 

If we take Copenhagen-Lisbon-Miami Return, GCMapper calculates that as being 11,388 Miles, so you would end up with ~ 22.700 Miles if you credited the flights to the above programmes.

You might prefer to credit to Asiana or ANA etc though, even though they only offer 125% of flown Miles (you’d get ~14,000 Miles), depending on what redemptions you are trying to save for.

Bottom line

Even with an excellent offer like these TAP Portugal fares, you can almost always find ways to extract more value – and that is the trick to great ‘travel hacking’!