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There are some truly excellent BA First Class fares available at the moment to the USA, as long as you are prepared to start your journey in Oslo/Prague/Budapest/etc.
German blog YHBU has a list of the prices from the various European cities you could fly from, but I’m just going to focus on the very best deals here, which seem to be from Oslo:
Oslo to New York (via London Heathrow): £1,878 Return
Availability is wide open and easy to find using Google Flights.
Oslo to Los Angeles (via London Heathrow): £1,900
There are plenty of other options too, like San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas, Seattle, etc for £100-£200 more.
Sticking with LA as an example though, you would earn about 29,000 Avios + 500 Tier Points, if you booked a direct routing on BA and credited the flights to British Airways Executive Club.
I would suggest that a better idea though, would be to credit the flights to Alaska Mileage Plan instead, where you would earn ~52,000 (very valuable!) Miles. I would personally value 52,000 Alaska Miles at about £950, so you’re looking at getting half the cost of your ticket back in Miles! If you’re wondering why I rate Alaska Mile so highly, have a look at some of the incredible ways you can redeem them here.
You would also earn ~28,000 Elite Qualifying (status) Miles, which would get you MVP status, over half way to MVP Gold, and nearly a third of the way towards MVP Gold 75K:
If you fancy giving American Airlines First Class a spin instead, you can find fantastic fares to Miami:
Oslo to Miami (via London Heathrow): £ 1,749
Note that you’ll earn fewer Miles crediting AA flights to Alaska than crediting BA flights though (about half as many as on a BA flight of the same length).
Bottom line
First Class for the price of Business Class – and earn A LOT of Miles at the same time. Still expensive, of course, but not completely stratospheric.
I remember years ago years ago flying from LHR to JFK on Concorde for less than £2,000.
As the journey needed to commence in Rome, I was given a return economy ticket to Rome, one leg to position myself for the start of the round trip and a return leg, which I didn’t use.
From Rome the journey started with Business Class flight to London, a night in the Hilton at T4, Concorde to JFK and Business Class back to London, they gave me a stopover in London and so I was able to retrieve my luggage, I didn’t bother going back to Rome.
This was my only venture into positioning flights
Now that’s something definitely worth repositioning for! – What was Concorde like to fly in?
Amazing prices for first, even better with the amount of miles earnt back!
Hi Joe
I looked at some of the prices and they’re definitely less than flying direct from London – is it possible then not to use the last leg and collect bags in London on the return?
Thanks
If you can force a change of airports in London (LHR/LGW) you will be able to collect your bags, otherwise you are relying on the generosity of the check in agent in the US.
There are reports of BA not crediting Avios if the whole trip isn’t taken so that may be a risk. You should be crediting to Alaska though anyway!
The other alternative is forcing an overnight stop of slightly less than 24 hours at Heathrow. (easy or hard, depending on when the flight arrives from the U.S.)
Hi Sharat – Andrew and Craig have covered the options there. Basically, it’s not something airlines like you doing, so you need to try and engineer a reason why you would need your bags at London. An overnight wait between before the flight you’re supposed to be connecting to or a change of airports are the best reasons.