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A number of Star Alliance airlines are currently offering attractive prices on Business Class fares for travel between Nice and Beijing. These fares are readily available and the travel dates span the next 11 months so finding a fare that works for you shouldn’t be a problem.
Headline Fare Rules
- Minimum stay is 5 days or, for shorter trips, a Saturday night stay is required
- Maximum stay is 3 months
- 1 stopover permitted in each direction at €100 each
- Tickets must be issued on or before 22 March 2019
- Infants/Children with their own seat cost 100% of the adult fare
- Infants (<2 years) without their own seat cost 10% of the adult fare
The Routings
The routings available will vary according to the airline offering the fare.
The primary airlines you’ll find offering the best fares are….
SWISS (layover in Zurich or Geneva):
And Lufthansa (layover in Munich or Frankfurt):
You’ll also find mixed airline itineraries available where SWISS/Lufthansa, SWISS/Air China will offer flights:
Fare Availability
The good prices firs appear towards the end of March….
…and then continue through April…
…May…..
…and June through December:
The good deal appears to end on 7 January 2020.
Searching For The Fares
You can use Google Flights to find these fares if that’s the search you’re used to using but I prefer to use the Matrix Search as it seems to show more flight options.
Here’s an example of the search parameters I used:
…but clearly you’ll need to tailor these to match your desired dates, currency etc…
Booking The Flights
All the flights I’ve found via the Matrix search tool are easy to find through Google Flights….
…and they seem to be equally easy to find though the airlines’ own websites:
Where To Credit The Flights
Lufthansa and SWISS are members of the Star Alliance so there are a good number of loyalty programs to which you can credit these flights.
Booking through SWISS or Lufthansa will see you book “P” coded fares which, according to wheretocredit.com, will earn you the following (depending on where you credit the flights):
Click to enlarge
Make sure you look through this tables carefully before deciding how to book your fare and where to credit to and make sure you understand how credits towards elite status will work too.
Also, bear in mind that some credit cards only offer bonus points for booking directly with an airline (like the Platinum Card from American Express) so make sure you don’t use an OTA if you plan on using such a card.
Bottom Line
All in all this is a pretty good Business Class fare for travel between Europe and Asia even if it’s not quite as good as what we see from Qatar Airways from time to time (although Qatar Airways fares are not of much use to flyers looking to keep Star Alliance status).
Make sure you do your research on which aircraft offer which cabins as not all are created equal (SWISS Business Class will be better than Lufthansa) and make sure you consider which airlines offer the more convenient departure times and the shortest layovers before you jump in to book.
