One change today in airfare to Europe is a step back several days to last week when LOT Polish introduced the lowest fares to Europe for Star Alliance members from Chicago and New York. Now that the crazy low fares in the $400s over the past four days with AA, DL and UA mostly expired or increased by $100 or more, the low fare deals to many airports are once again LOT Polish fares.
The difference today is American and Oneworld match many of the LOT Polish fares to Poland and also add new low $600s fares for the Baltic countries main airports in Vilnius Lithuania VNO, Riga, Latvia RIX and Tallinn, Estonia TLL.
Budapest and Prague and some other eastern Europe airports are also priced in $600s with Star Alliance and Oneworld.
LOT Polish flies from Chicago ORD and New York JFK. American has low fares to Poland and the Baltics from those two airports. Additionally, American has these same low fares from their hub airport Philadelphia PHL. The main issue with flights from Philadelphia is low fare tickets tend to require a flight from PHL to EWR and then transfer to JFK for FinnAir flight.
Chicago Fares
Star Alliance
$632 – $648 Star Alliance ORD – Warsaw
$651 LOT Polish ORD – Krakow, Poland KRK
$625 Turkish $665 LOT ORD – Prague, Czech Republic PRG
$652 LOT Polish/Star Alliance Chicago ORD – Budapest BUD Aug 26-Dec 6; Jan 16-Apr 30 nearly all dates.
Oneworld
$620-$635 ORD – Vilnius Lithuania VNO American/Finnair
$621-$635 ORD – Tallinn, Estonia TLL American/Finnair
$624-$640 ORD – Riga, Latvia RIX American/Finnair
$626 – $690 ORD – Krakow KRK American/Finnair (lowest fare in Sep).
$654 ORD – Warsaw American (Sep-Dec)
Also airports in Scandinavia on sale in $600s, but that is a common fare.
Similar fares are found from New York JFK and Philadelphia PHL.
American Airlines Chicago ORD – London LHR – Warsaw WAW
$653.86 round trip Thu Sep 15 – Sat Sep 24
FinnAir Airlines New York JFK – Helsinki HEL – Krakow KRK
Google Flights shows the same $607 fare for FinnAir ticketing, however I get a $645 price on FinnAir outbound with BA flights inbound. Priceline gets around this with all FinnAir operated and marketed flights for $607.
Update: Seattle – Helsinki is $665 round trip with American Airlines flying AA to SEA-New York JFK and FinnAir to Helsinki.
This leads to an interesting point of speculation for AAdvantage changes 2016. We learned last week that American Airlines AAdvantage goes revenue-based on August 1. We were also notified that changes for AAdvantage partner airline earning would be published by August 1.
FinnAir flights are currently one of the sweet spots for AAdvantage. In the Priceline ticket above, FinnAir flights are in economy O class as seen when I check Expedia. I only show Priceline for its easy to read display. Priceline has the disadvantage of not showing fare class for flights.
FinnAir Economy O class earns 100% flight miles in AAdvantage. This may change August 1. Assuming it does not change, then the FinnAir ticket will earn 9,402 flight miles, whereas the American Airlines ticket to Warsaw only earns redeemable miles based on $517 base fare or about 2,585 miles for the base level AAdvantage member and fewer than 6,000 miles for ExPlat elites.
Loyalty Traveler – American Airlines AAdvantage goes revenue-based August 1, 2016 (June 6).
Loyalty Traveler – LOT Polish Chicago-Amsterdam $522, JFK-Paris $543 Sep to March, most dates (June 8).
Loyalty Traveler curated Airfare Deals and Google Flights and Kayak Explore tutorials.
