Booking London with Amex miles what airline to use

American
British
Delta
Air France
Iberia
KLM
Virgin

I’m thinking a better experience in Coach might be with a foreign carrier

Virgin by a landslide

Aren’t like 5 of your 7 flights codeshares?

Turns out YES

If you book using Avios or AA miles on BA, the taxes and carrier imposed surcharges will mean that you miles plus tax/fee cost will be around 80% of your total cash cost. Not worth the miles.

I’d make the decision more on the availability dates than particular carrier. If you find availability on AA metal using AA miles, then I would go for it, but that’s remote.

A lot depends on where you are coming from. You can transfer points to BA but taxes are stupid expensive in to LHR. I would guess another direct option would be Virgin. They did a transfer bonus a while ago plus you got status. Delta/AF/KLM might be an option too. The AF/KLM flying blue program is excellent and has lots of availability. I have used Amex points transfers a few times from ORD to AMS and CDG.

Using Amex pay with points is a bad use of points.

George

Aren’t Viegin taxes the same as BA?

Not sure what the current Flying Blue promotion is, but if BOS-LHR is on the list, it would probably be the cheapest of the bunch. You should also consider looking at transferring to ANA. They are a Star Alliance member, so you can search for seats on United’s website for availabilty.55k roundtrip in economy. Same story for Aeroplan, but 60k in economy.

It’s also worth noting that BA, Iberia, & Virgin America transfer ratios are less than 1:1 with Amex Membership Rewards. I would think long and hard about Delta as figuring out how many miles it’s going to cost you and finding availability can be challenging.

If you can book 330 days out, the best Delta awards are on Air France, availability is more predictible for the first couple of days they are on the schedule and are a fixed miles amount (125k before 1/1, 140k after for business).

Since a direct flight from Boston is just 6.5-7 hours pretty much anyone’s premium economy will do. I would favor availability over any particular airline for a short hop across the Atlantic. I only fly coach when at ticketing I can land an exit row seat or equivalent based on seatguru advice.

Further, it’s a route which often has cheapo fares where buying is the better value over miles which could be put to use on $2,000 and up rt fares. Norwegian has dates < $500 rt.

Absolutely

I would be looking for award travel for hotels in London. It is one of the most expensive for good hotels.

Amex has a 50% bonus if you transfer to Avios. While this is a nice bonus you still have to watch the fees flying in to LHR on BA.

George

Too much of a blanket statement and many variables to just pick an airline…Schedule? Ticket pricing? Bonus on transfers between AMEX and airlines, etc…

Based on carrier alone, out of Boston, for coach, I think most American carriers are so similar I’d just book on miles (whatever was cheapest). I’d assume DL, BA, VA and AA would go direct to London.

BA would worry me on the costs (I know their 1st class on BA metal can get crazy on taxes, unsure in economy). - Does VA have the same tax issues?

KLM - connection in AMS?
AF - Connection in CDG?
Iberia - Connection in BCN?

No thanks to all of those/connection

DL, AA, VA, BA would me my first choices but as I said before, if the taxes were crazy I’d nix BA and VA.

Thanks all; went with DL/Air France extra legroom seats.