How do you fly so luxuriously? That’s a question I have been getting a lot after posting about my Etihad First Class Apartment, Emirates Business Class, Etihad Business Class and Qatar Airways First Class experiences.
I did not win the lottery and no I am not one of those Instagrammers who ask $5000 for a picture and get everything for free. I actually work full time, pay for my trips and even explain how you can do it for peanuts too 😉 The fact that you have to work for it and do quite some research makes it also very rewarding.
That being said, feel free to sponsor my next flight or trip 😀 And please do follow me on Instagram and Facebook for more tips and adventures!
I will show you a few general techniques but also how I booked my Etihad First Class Apartment. One piece of the puzzle is signing up for cards like the Citi Bank Credit Card (refer a friend link), read on to find out more 😉
Pay peanuts for Business and First Class flights
The easiest, no nonsense way to fly cheap, is taking advantage of promotional fares.
A great example is my First Class A380 experience with Qatar Airways. I just paid 1100 USD for 4 flights. Note that one way First Class tickets on a lot of airlines can go up to 10.000 USD or even 20.000 USD.
In a month I will also fly from Dubai to The Philippines and back in Business Class on Philippine Airlines for just 770 USD. And you could have booked it too if you followed my blog 😉 😛
How do I discover these deals?
To stay on top of hot deals I spend 30 minutes every day on forums like Flyertalk, reading blogs, scanning Facebook groups, playing around on google flights. You can read more about that in my special fares post.
It’s not like I wake up and decide to book a First Class flight. You have to wait until there is a deal and hope it’s around dates you are free. You also need to make sure that the departure city is easy to reach. This means you sometimes have to do a positioning flight from your home city to the deal departure city. Often this is on a different ticket so you need to foresee enough time so you don’t miss your epic deal flight.
Positioning means different things for different people. I would say the departure city should be within a 4 hour flight and it does not cost more than 200 USD to reach.
I also know people who fly to the other side of the world to start a deal. For some people the destination does not even matter, it’s about the flight experience.
It’s also an opportunity to visit places that are not on the top of your bucket list. And you can always add another flight to your trip. Why not combine Cairo, Bangkok and Hanoi in one trip?
Booking promo fares is a double win
When you book a discounted fare you only pay a fraction of the real Business or First Class ticket value. And on top of that you will earn a good amount of air miles. That’s because airlines often give much more miles for Business and First class tickets compared to economy.
Earn loads of miles and spend them in the best way possible
Besides paying for cheap fares you can also start collecting miles and use those to redeem free tickets. When you fly and you have signed up for the frequent Flyer program of that airline (which is free) then you earn air miles. Always keep your boarding passes as a proof in case you do not receive your miles after your flight.
Most airlines allow you to request missing miles up to 6 months after your flight. So if you flew 5 months ago and only sign up for the program today, you can still earn miles for that flight.
I don’t fly a lot for work and if I do it’s in economy. Although I have taken a lot of flights for personal travel, earning a decent amount of miles takes ages in economy. I always look for cheap tickets, remember my 50 USD return ticket from Dubai to Philippines, and that’s how I end up flying over 30 different airlines which often haven different frequent flyer programs.
How can I earn a lot of miles quickly?
Earning enough miles on economy flights to redeem a Business class ticket will take you ages. Let’s look at 2 ways to speed up this process. Beware it requires some investment.
Buy cheap Business and First class flights. You will have an awesome experience and you will earn much more miles compared to economy.
By “cheap” I mean between 600 USD – 2000 USD for a ticket depending on the route and compared to the real value of that ticket (up to 20.000 USD and more).
Look for credit cards with singup bonuses
Banks will do anything to convince you to get a credit card. Take advantage and take all the credit cards that offer good benefits.
The 2 most important things to look for are free lounge access and earning miles. So for every dirham/dollar you spend you will earn miles and some cards also offer you a sign up bonus in miles.
Beware that some banks will try to fool you with high amounts of fake “miles”. Their so called “miles” are just points you can use on their own travel and shop portal and are not really useful to accomplish our goal. It’s very deceiving to use the term “miles” when you actually won’t be able to get any real air miles. So always ask the bank if you can convert the miles to real airline miles.
The Card Game in Dubai and Abu Dhabi
Citi Bank
With Citi Bank credit cards you earn Citi Thank You points. You can convert these points to different airlines mile programs and Etihad is one of them 😉 If you are lucky there is also a sign up bonus to give you a head start!
You can sign up here (refer a friend link).
Emirates NBD SPG
With an SPG card you get a lot of advantages in Starwoods hotels and you can use the points for free stays but you can also convert the points to a lot of different airlines.
NBAD Etihad Guest
The name says it all you will earn Etihad miles when using this card.
How did I book my Etihad First Class Apartment?
First I looked up which Etihad airplane type had the coolest First Class. Quickly I found out that the A380 has First Class Apartments, an onboard lounge and a shower! Then I googled which routes are operated on the A380. The route from Abu Dhabi to London was perfect for me as I needed to get from Dubai to Europe during the summer anyway. Etihad has a chauffeur service so I got a free ride from Dubai to Abu Dhabi as well.
The next step is figuring out how many miles are required to fly from Abu Dhabi to London in First class. All this info is available on the Etihad website. You need a whopping 87.732 miles for a one way First class from Abu Dhabi to London.
Then I searched for availability which was quite hard to find! There were plenty of open seats available which required much more miles. But I wanted to get it cheap, that’s what this whole game is about. So for 7 days I had a routine of waking up and checking many dates to find a cheap guest seat. No one said this was going to be easy! Finally I found a seat but there was one problem. I did not have enough miles. Noooooo all this work for nothing …. but luckily you can buy extra miles during check out. I knew about this before I started the booking off course because I read a lot of blog posts about Etihad miles. Again there is a lot of research and time going into locking in a deal like this.
The First step is knowing how much miles you need, the second step is finding ways of earning those miles. So where did I get all the miles so quickly?
I used a combination of earning miles by paying for cheap Etihad Business class tickets and earning miles with the Citi Bank credit card (refer a friend link) and the NBAD Etihad Guest credit card.
So I ended up paying $380 for some extra miles and taxes. You do not escape the fuel surcharge on award tickets.
Yes it’s a lot of work but let me know when you are showering at 40.000 feet or have Waguy beef in your Etihad Apartment. Tag tag me on Instagram and Facebook when you land a Business or First Class deal!
Leave a comment if you have any questions and if you enjoyed reading this post, please share it with your friends 🙂
How many miles on average do you need to fly business? Is it 25k miles? How long did this whole process take you? Does Citi joining bonus include real miles or fake ones?
@Shaad good questions!
1. The miles required to Fly Business class are different for each airline. Roughly you need between 45.000 and 70.000 miles for 6-8 hour flight.
With Etihad you need 25.800 miles for Business Class from Abu Dhabi to Bahrain for example (miles needed may be different if you have a higher frequent flyer status). You can calculate the miles required on the airline’s website most of the time.
2. The Citi Bank Thank You points can be converted to real air miles, I only want to recommend and mention good cards 🙂 Fake miles cannot be converted to any airline miles, those work more like food and beverage vouchers on a festival, you can only use them on the bank portal to buy airline tickets (at the same price of cash value, so nothing special).
I prefer cards like Citi Bank because you can convert the points to a lot of different airlines. It gives you flexibility because you are not bound to 1 airline.
Cool tips! There’s hardly any difference between ththe first and business class in emirates though! Just a door and s shift bigger seat and tv and leg space. I wouldn’t say it’s worth the price difference. However Etihad First Class seems attractive definitely!
@Saara I think the personal service in First will be better, if you fly Business on the a380 you are just a number and if you have a middle seat you have to crawl over passenger. So in First you should get very personal attention. The new Emirates First class is on my bucket list but I will wait until there is an affordable way of booking it 😛
On long haul routes on the better airlines you might get seats that recline into full-flat beds, excellent 3 and 4 course meals, designer amenity kits in addition to the above perks.
It’s a notch below 1st class regarding seat size, cuisine, type of champagnes, wines and liquors offered, but it’s still a great way to fly for a lot less than a 1st class ticket.