A little SkyTeam delight, with a lot of miles too…
From time to time, business class drops from the out of reach five figure numbers of old into something utterly tempting. Queue the utterly tempting part. SkyTeam airline, Xiamen, is making quite a footprint on the U.S. air travel scene, in part, thanks to business class flash sales offering 24+ hours of round trip flying in flat beds for under $1800 round trip. Xiamen’s latest sale offers round trip flights from Los Angeles to Hong Kong under $1900, with the potential to use points to knock the price down too.
The Deals
These deals are attractive not only because you can trade economy seats for flat beds on modern Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, but because you’ll also earn a minimum of 18,000 miles, if you credit your flights to an airline loyalty program, such as Air France Flying Blue. You’ll enjoy flat beds for the 14 hour ride between Los Angeles and Xiamen, before connecting on for the 1 hour regional flight to Hong Kong. Since business class traditionally averages well above $3500 per seat, it’s hard not to see the value here. Flights are also available for just under $2,000 from Vancouver.
The Dates
Flat beds sounding pretty good right now? These deals are available from late August 2018 thru April 2019, for travel departing on Tuesdays, Thursdays or Sundays. You must stay at least two nights in Hong Kong, but that’s pretty much the only requirement.
How To Book
Booking is fairly straight forward, if you follow the rules. The easiest way to find these great Los Angeles deals, is by using Google Flights. Here’s a link. Once you’ve found dates, consider using Momondo, or one of the other best sites for cheap flight deals to see if you can take the price lower. Here’s a link for Vancouver, as well. Xiamen has these flight deals going for $1913, but using Momondo we were able to see countless sites offering the same flights for $1815 round trip. If you have Chase Ultimate Rewards Points via Sapphire Reserve, you’d need just 125,000 points to book this ticket, and still earn miles and elite status qualifying points in return. Not bad, right?
As a SkyTeam member, might this carrier(Xiamen) be usable if credited back to Delta for MR opportunity? Delta usually awards actual miles flown at 150-200% if using a premium partner cabin.
Add the 5X AMEX platinum for purchased tickets and this r/t could prove lucrative assuming I can get to LAX…