Welcome to my next trip report, which will cover my summer holiday to Germany with flights on United Airlines, British Airways, and Air France.
A German Summer Holiday On Air France, British Airways, United Airlines
As I promised, I’m getting caught up on a few trip reports from last year that I have not previously covered. This trip will recount our August 2024 trip to London, the German state of Baden-Württemberg, where my in-laws live, and Paris. As my children grow older, I increasingly value our family trips to Germany. It’s vital to me that my kids keep in touch with the German side of their family and continue to improve their German language skills, which is hard to do here in the USA, even though they hear a lot of German at home…
The trip planning was quite easy: I noticed that United had PZ9 (meaning at least nine confirmed upgrades available) on its Denver – London flight, so I booked four one-way tickets (in W-class) from Burbank (BUR) – Denver (DEN) – London (LHR) for 577.80 USD each…what a deal when I was able to conifrm the ugprades immediately upon booking (40 PlusPoints each).
My sister-in-law lives in London so we spent a couple of days there (and I ended up spending an unexpected extra day there…) after I ran into some trouble booking London (LHR) – Basel (BSL) tickets on British Airways…though we eventually made it to Switzerland/Germany (those tickets were 9,000 Avois and 60 USD each).
After a lovely two weeks of rest and relaxation in Germany, we flew home on Air France in economy class…whenever I can get tickets for 15,000 miles each, I do not hesitate. Our trip home from Basel (BSL) to Los Angeles (LAX) included an overnight stay in Paris (CDG), where we stayed at the Hyatt Place.
The four tickets cost 60,000 points and 651.60 USD…what a great deal. With the kids four and eight years old, we can handle economy class on a daytime flight and of course my miles and points reserves are not unlimited!
Here is what the individual 19 segments will include:
- United Airlines A319 Economy Class (BUR-DEN)
- A Visit To the Control Tower In Denver
- United Airlines 787-9 Business Class (DEN-LHR)
- 48 Magnificent Hours In London
- Qatar Airways Premium Lounge London (LHR)
- Qatar Airways Frequent Flyer London (LHR)
- Qantas Lounge London (LHR)
- Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge London (LHR)
- British Airways Galleries First Lounge London (LHR – T5)
- British Airways A319 Business Class (LHR-BSL)
- How I Summer In Germany
- Great Coffee In Offenburg, Germany
- Great Coffee In Ludwigsburg, Germany
- A Visit To The Family Farm In Germany
- EuroAirport Skyview Lounge Basel (BSL)
- Air France HOP! Embraer 190 Economy Class (BSL-CDG)
- Hyatt Place CDG Airport
- Pre-Flight Sauna In Air France Lounge
- Air France 777-300 Economy Class (CDG-LAX)
I look forward to sharing this review over the next three weeks. Please let me know if you have any specific questions or if there is something in particular you would like me to focus on.
Thanks for reading!
I’d be curious of you used the Deutschland Ticket while you were there. I was in Germany for Feb and essentially unlimited access to all public transportation was awesome. Perhaps you picked up some tips/tricks from your family. I’m planning to spend all of Sept in Germany, and I intend to make regional trains be my office each day.
We used a car for this trip – but I agree that the train system is great, even for “office days.”
May I ask roughly how far in advance you were able to find such good availability on UA and AF?
Sure.
UA ticket booked on June 29th (for July 31st travel)
AF ticket booked on May 31st (for August 16th travel)
Really great pricing on both – we were fortunate.
Wow—closer in than I would have thought. Well done.
Looking forward to it!
Basel lol. I get you were using Air France but Basel is easily accessible within Switzerland from Genevè or Zürich via rail.
In-laws are 15 minutes from Basel, 60 minutes from Zurich – much easier to fly into BSL.
Why not dump off – I mean have the kids stay with the grandparents for a summer or two? That should do wonders for both their language skills and their comfort level in Germany.
I wish that was an option…
:/
Were you able to access the AF Lounge(Sauna) with economy seats??ELite airline status..?
Yes. I have SkyTeam+ with SAS and ITA.
Do you speak German?
Ja.