Business Class Deal: Germany to Australia from $1,600, Southeast Asia from $1,200

Posted By Stephen Hoechst on Nov 10, 2019 | 0 comments

(Image courtesy of flickr.com)

Black Friday is fast approaching. With less than three weeks to go, Airlines will be fighting for your wallet share with some great deals sure to pop up. The airlines know you only have so much time and money to spend and want to be the first to get your money before a competitor does.

It looks like Air China wants to get a head start on that, rolling out some great deals out of Germany in honor of Chinese Black Friday.

The Deals

Air China is running a sale from November 11th to the 13th with some great business class fares out of Germany. You’ll be able to fly to numerous destinations across Southeast Asia starting from $1,200. Flights to Australia and New Zealand will run around $1,600. These are fantastic rates for these routes. Some of the options include up to 40 hours in business class! Some of these may have overnight connections in Beijing. Not to worry though – Air China offers a free hotel stay for passengers with overnight layovers.

The deals go live on November 11th. While Air China’s site doesn’t specify a time, I’d guess that these deals will be live at midnight in Germany (6pm EST). (Update: these are live as of 6pm 11/10.)

There are too many destinations to list out, so here’s the list from Air China’s webpage.

To book these deals, follow this link over to Air China’s German deals page. Don’t worry, you can still view it in English. Just click on the deal you want to take advantage of and enter your dates. You’ll go through the normal booking process from there.

The Dates

For the business class deals, you’ll need to depart on the following dates:

• 12/13/19 – 1/12/20
• 1/18/20 – 1/28/20
• 3/27/20 – 4/12/20
• 6/28/20 – 8/23/20

The sale page doesn’t specify the minimum or maximum stay, so you may be able to space your flights out and turn this into a 2-in-1 trip if you want.

How to make these deals work

If you’re in the US, you’re probably thinking, “That’s a great deal, but I’m not in Germany.” While that may be true, that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of this deal.

Of course, you could just use points to get to Germany and go from there. This would be a great way to take advantage of British Airways current offer of 50% off on award bookings.

Alternatively, you could wait it out and see when the next deal to Europe pops up. We’re always on the lookout for deals and with Black Friday coming up soon, I’d bet we’ll see some pretty good deals then. Still, booking positioning flights and nested 2-in-1 itineraries may not be for everybody. Here’s a handy guide on booking them if you do decide to take the plunge.

Where to credit

(Screenshot courtesy of GCmap.com)

United MileagePlus

If you’re looking at earning elite status, this could be a pretty unique opportunity to take advantage of United’s new elite scheme. For those not familiar, United will be changing the way you earn elite status in 2020. Distance flown will no longer matter when it comes to elite status. Instead, it all comes down to spend and segments flown.

Since these fares are likely to book into the R fare class, you’ll earn 125% of the miles flown on Air China when crediting to United’s MileagePlan. For a round trip between Frankfurt and Sydney, that’s 20,800 miles flown or 26,000 redeemable miles.

To calculate the amount of Premier Qualifying Points (PQPs) earned on an Air China Flight, you’ll take the number of redeemable miles and divide it by 5. That will give you 5,200 PQPs! Just from this flight alone, you’ll have already earned United Silver status.

(Note that to qualify for United status, you’ll need at least four segments flown on United, regardless of spend.)

Asiana Club

Another intriguing option is Korean carrier, Asiana’s mileage program. Crediting to Asiana Club will earn 110% of the mileage flown, netting nearly 23,000 redeemable miles on the same Frankfurt-Sydney flight.

For those of you not familiar with the Asiana Club program, they have some really cool niche redemptions, like 50,000 miles for Lufthansa First Class from North America to Europe.

In addition, Asiana elite status is pretty easy to earn and keep. Asiana’s mid-tier diamond status only requires 40,000 miles to reach and lasts for two years. Once you have it, it only takes 30,000 miles to retain status. Diamond status with Asiana also earns Star Alliance Gold benefits, giving you access for you and a guest to Star Alliance business class lounges worldwide.

Being nearly half way to Lufthansa First Class and more than half way to Star Alliance Gold is pretty awesome if you ask me.

Final Thoughts

$1,600 for business class from Europe to Australia is a great deal. The sale starts tomorrow so consider this your heads up. While the deal is scheduled to run until Wednesday, I imagine the best deals will disappear pretty quickly.

Let us know if you’re able to snag one of these deals.

(h/t Flyertalk user Yun Dou for first spotting this deal)