My $888 Business Class Flights On Air France & Delta – Introduction

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Because I like to plan my trips quite far in advance I’ve known for a few months that I have enough trips booked to lock up American Airlines Executive Platinum status for another year so, when an opportunity arose to try out something new, I jumped at the chance.

I hadn’t flown with Air France for years and I had never set foot on a Delta aircraft in my life so, when I spotted an amazing Business Class fares on offer out of Madrid, I knew I had to make the most of the opportunity.

I have no idea why Delta was selling Business Class fares between Madrid and New York for a little over $1,000, but I did know that despite my often chaotic flying schedule, I had to fit a trip in somehow – I knew that this could be the best opportunity to review both the Air France and Delta Business Class cabins for some time.

Delta Business Class on the 767

The crazy thing was that, because of my other trips and commitments, the best I could manage was a whirlwind 2 night trip to NYC with only one of those nights being in a hotel (the other in a plane). I would be on the ground in New York for less than 24 hours.

As ridiculous as that itinerary sounds I had to do it, partly because it was a chance to review some cabins I haven’t reviewed before, partly because it was such a good price for a Business Class trip and partly because I had a way of making the flights even cheaper.

The Amex Delta Offer

Back in August I wrote about the great Amex offer that would give you a $200 for spending $1,000 directly with Delta and, although I never fly with Delta, I was sensible enough to sign up for this offer on all three of my Amex cards that offered it “just in case”….

The good thing about this offer was that, unlike similar Amex offers I’ve seen for airlines like Virgin Atlantic, there was no requirement for travel to start in the US.

The only thing that I was slightly concerned about was that I was being changed in Euros and not Dollars and, although the total spend was over the $1,000 threshold (once the Euros were converted to USD), I wasn’t sure if this would interfere with the rebate in any way.

Booking The Trip

Thanks to the generous nature of the Delta Business Class fares I had a number of routing options open to me.

The route I’m guessing most normal people would go for was the straightforward round trip (MAD-JFK-MAD) with Delta in both directions….but you can’t be both a miles & points blogger and “normal” at the same time 🙂

I had no need to try out Delta One (Business Class) in more than one direction so I chose to route my outbound trip via Paris so that I could try out Air France’s Business Class product as well (all the flights were booked via Delta so the fact I was also flying on Air France wouldn’t affect the Amex rebate).

Air France Business Class 777-300ER – image courtesy of Air France

I’m more than happy to admit that I don’t know all that much about Air France but I know enough to avoid the airline’s A380 Business Class cabin – while Air France has been upgrading its Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s with nice new Business Class cabins the Airbus A380s have been left behind…and will remain behind for quite a few years.

It turned out that avoiding the Air France A380 was pretty simple so, once I had picked my flights in a way that would allow me to connect from/to the UK without needing a hotel layover, I booked the trip using my Amex SPG credit card.

The €966.62 ended up converting to $1,088.61 on my Amex SPG credit card…..

..and then I just had to wait to see if the Amex offer would kick in.

As it turns out I didn’t have that long to wait because, within a couple of minutes, this dropped into my inbox:

And a few days later both the charge for the flights and the rebate were showing in my Amex online account:

The total cost for my Business Class flights was $888.61

The total cost of my flights was actually higher than that because I also had to pay for a positioning flight from the UK:

At the ruling exchange rate on the day that came to a pretty expensive $238.48

But that still meant that the total cost of all my flights was $1,127.09

Not bad considering most of my flying time was spent in all-aisle access Business Class cabins with true lie-flat seating 🙂

Upcoming Reviews

I said that I booked this trip to get some reviews out of it so here’s what I’ll be publishing in the coming days/weeks:

• Review: Iberia A320 Economy Class (LHR-MAD)
• Review: Sala VIP Puerta Del Sol Madrid T3
• Review: Air France A320 Business Class (MAD-CDG)
• Review: Air France 777-300ER Business Class (CDG-JFK)
• Review: Marriott Courtyard Chelsea NYC
• Review: Delta Sky Club New York JFK
• Review: Delta One 767 (JFK-MAD)
• Review: Iberia Velazquez Lounge T4S (OneWorld) – updated for a more recent review

Bottom Line

This may have been a pretty crazy trip to take but I’m very glad I did it. The experiences I had with Air France and with Delta weren’t entirely what I was expecting and, without wanting to give away too much, were partly responsible for my decision on what to do with regards top-tier airline status going forward.

Next Up: Review: Iberia A320 Economy Class (LHR-MAD)