It’s no secret that JetBlue has struggled with its transatlantic flights. Right now that’s to our benefit because they’re making business class award space widely available across a number of their flights, in some cases between now and end of spring, and for at least two and sometimes more passengers at a time.
You can fly:
- New York JFK: Amsterdam, Dublin, Edinburgh, London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Paris
- Boston: Amsterdam, Dublin, London Gatwick, Paris
Mint Studio
It’s possible to book these flights for as little as 60,000 Amex points each way. Here are costs of booking through different programs:
- JetBlue: underscoring just how bad JetBlue’s own program is, they’ll charge you nearly 140,000 points in each direction
- Etihad: Not known for its generosity, Etihad Guest charges 80,000 points each way
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club: charges 78,000 points each way
Mint Studio
The opportunity is that you can transfer points to Qatar Airways from either American Express Membership Rewards or Citibank. Or – better yet – you can transfer points into British Airways from Chase, American Express, Capital One, Wells Fargo and Bilt. And Amex has a 30% transfer bonus right now.
60,000 American Express points transfer into 78,000 British Airways points with this bonus, and from BA you can move your Avios into the Qatar Airways Privilege Club program.
Depending on the route, you’ll generally pay $5.60 in security taxes for the outbound but $50 – $200 in taxes and fees on the return from Europe.
Credit to Find Flights For Me on Instagram for flagging this opportunity, and it’s well-summarized here:
While JetBlue operates narrowbody aircraft across the Atlantic, they offer nice seats and a very nice soft product as well.
Why is TrueBlue letting itself get out-competed by mid-tier foreign programs? Are the lights completely off in that department? I have a Barclay JetBlue card and I want an excuse to use it. JetBlue can’t even bother to give me one. Sad stuff.
Wish it was reasonable from LAX. I’d settle for reasonable lax-jfk in mint.
JetBlue: “We initiated transatlantic flights from two airports with a huge # of transatlantic flights and we can’t figure out why we’re struggling!”
Philly: “Dude, we’re right here with only one airline doing transatlantic flights, and lots of customers craving an alternative to American.”
I have no sympathy for JetBlue if their management continues to be this dumb.
@JKT
The Philly metro area has less than 1/3 the population of the NY metro area, so that’s not quite as appealing a market as you might think
@Bob,
I was comparing to Boston, not New York. But the comment stands–PHL would have less competition and thus fill the flights for more $ per seat than BOS or JFK.
While this isn’t bad, I don’t think 120,000 Amex points for a roundtrip on an airlines with limited hubs to position to is THAT cheap.
Be advised: Qatar program super difficult to work with (and $) in the event of even minor changes. Booking tech seems ok at first glance, but after three hours of my life just yesterday of being an involuntary beta tester, I can testify otherwise.
Only go after tix you are willing to throw away.
Great way to quickly find award seat availability for the mint transatlantic seats across a 30 day calendar is go to the ita matrix website, type origin and destination for one way, filter for nonstop only, select number of people, and then under advanced controls enter “o:b6” for Routing Codes and “f bc=i” for Extension Codes” then search, the dates that shows a monetary amount in the results calendar means that number of award seats can be booked through Qatar avios for that day!