In the new Emirates commercial, Jennifer Aniston has a nightmare about being on an airplane that doesn’t feature showers or a bar. Can you imagine such an atrocity? Kidding of course, most of us can only imagine a crowded airplane and have never even dreamt a flight featuring a shower, a large leather seat that turns into a bed and mingling at a bar in the air. Now you can have it all on Etihad’s First apartment featuring all the above. It’s an apartment!
On board you will have a literal apartment with space to stand up and walk, a large wide leather appointed seat, an ottoman which converts into a 6’7” bed oh yes, and an on board bar and shower. In case you’re wondering, this level of pleasure generally requires somewhere north of $10,000. Per person! You can literally rinse the jet lag off, unless of course you had too much of the $500+ a bottle of Gosset vintage champagne.
So this is the part where I tell you how to do it for $981. You buy American Airlines miles in their current sale for $885 + taxes ($981). Through November 30th, American is offering miles priced as low as they go, giving you the chance to purchase the 40,000 miles required for a one way First Apartment journey from London to Abu Dhabi (or vice versa) for $981. What about both ways? You might be thrilled to know because the mileage sale bonus miles are staggered, for less than double you can book it round trip, allowing you to not even score business class tickets for $1774, but First Class apartment tickets. That’s a deal, and yes that figure is in US Dollars. Crack open the expensive champagne…. or just wait for them to do it.
If there is a catch, it’s the same catch involved in all uses of miles, you must find availability. Fortunately, there is presently tons of availability. This is a great purchase for someone with flexibility who wants to have an incredible experience whenever they can find availability; or a sage purchase if you can find availability for the dates you know you’d need to travel that you’d end up paying around the same or worse for coach. Searching is fairly easy: you simply log on to Etihad’s site, select London to Abu Dhabi or vice versa, using miles and search for “Guest Seat” availability (pictured below). Guest seat signifies the lowest amount of miles required and thus the ability to use their partner, American Airlines miles to book the seat. The mileage you will see quoted is for using Etihad miles, American requires just a mere 40,000 and minimal taxes for the same flights. To complete your booking using your American miles, all you need to do is call the airline (numbers in link). Sadly, it can’t be done directly online.
I just picked May at random and found availability to and from London with Guest Seat availability in a matter of seconds. That’s a lot better than most of my search experiences including a recent change to Japan in which I couldn’t find a seat for a calendar year! Whatever your reason, if you can find availability this is a tremendous opportunity to fly better than royalty at economy level pricing. Enjoy my friends!
As Always, Get in Touch: GodSaveThePoints@gmail.com
