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There are a ton of Canada-to-Europe Star Alliance routes with better availability in economy and business class this summer than USA-to-Europe routes.
Connections from the US to Canada are easy to find, connecting in Canada generally leads to less flying than connecting in the US, and all airlines I can think of allow a connection in Canada between the US and Europe.
What are the routes with award space? What miles can book the space cheaper?
The major Star Alliance players on Canada-to-Europe routes are Lufthansa and Air Canada.
Air Canada offers fully flat beds on its transatlantic business class flights. Air Canada doesn’t have first class.
Lufthansa offers flat beds in business class on some flights. (The page Lufthansa set up to tell you whether a specific flight had the new flat bed product has displayed an error message for months. To figure out if your plane has flat beds, you can call Lufthansa.) Lufthansa first class award space is only released to partners 15 days before the flight and costs 110k United miles each way!
To get from the US-to-Canada, United and Air Canada both offer a ton of flights with good award space.
To see what Air Canada, Lufthansa, and United flights serve your home airport and where you want to go, use wikipedia.
Selected Routes
For all calendars below, the search is for award space for one person on the direct flights on the route being discussed.
- Yellow days on the calendar mean there is Saver economy award space.
- Blue means Saver business award space.
- Green means Saver award space in economy and business.
- White means no Saver award space.
Montreal to Munich (Lufthansa)
Lufthansa will operate a flight from Montreal to Munich daily this summer.
Award space is good in June and phenomenal in July.
Toronto to London (Air Canada)
Air Canada has several daily flights from Toronto to London.
Award space is good on Fridays in July, which can maximize how many weekend days (and minimize how many weekdays) your trip to Europe includes.
Montreal to Geneva
Air Canada has a daily flight from Montreal to Geneva leaving at 8:50 PM, which is late enough to easily connect in Montreal.
Award space is fantastic on the route this summer.
What other great Canada-to-Europe routes can you find on united.com?
Connections
If you fly the Lufthansa routes, which all go to Frankfurt and Munich, you’ll have incredible options for connections throughout Europe and beyond out of those Lufthansa hubs.
If you fly an Air Canada route, you will have better connection options if you fly into a Star Alliance hub than a non-Star Alliance hub like London or Paris.
Getting to a Canadian gateway should be easy on United or Air Canada flights.
What Miles to Use
Awards from the US to Europe (whether or not they route through Canada) on partner airlines currently cost 30k United miles each way in economy and 70k each way in business.
All* the awards mentioned in this post could also be booked with US Airways miles for the far cheaper price of 100k US Airways miles roundtrip in business class. US Airways charges the same 60k miles roundtrip in economy.
*Exception: US Airways is still blocking some Lufthansa award space. You have to call US Airways to ask if the agent sees the specific Lufthansa award space you found on united.com. If not, you can ask for a manual sell, but most of the agents will now refuse. For more, see Booking Lufthansa Flights with US Airways Miles.
If you want to take advantage of the cheaper price to Europe this summer with US Airways miles, you need to book by March 30, 2014, the last day that US Airways will be a member of the Star Alliance.
Recap
When searching segment-by-segment for a summer trip to Europe with United or US Airways miles, don’t forget to search the Canada-to-Europe flights, many of which have better award space than the US-to-Europe routes at the moment.
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Regardless of alliance, Canada’s departure taxes are very much higher than the ones from USA.
Yes, but passing through doesn’t incur those taxes. For instance Chicago to Montreal to Geneva has taxes of $2.50.
Can you book Air Canada awards using Life Miles ?
Yes
There seems to be some LH first class seats on the YUL-MUC route for May/June already made available!
Thanks for sharing!
I used this trick to get to Paris around the holidays on Air Canada- connected through Montreal. There was no availability leaving the US at that time. Air Canada has a great business product on its 777, by the way!
Yes, I have heard that. I am looking forward to testing it out myself!
as usual, failing to mention some important details…such as: in most cases, you’re going to be on a small “regional jet” for your leg from your US origin to your Canadian connection city. IF that’s a short leg, fine. But if that first leg is a couple hours or more…you might want to take that into consideration. For those of us in the western US, a “regional jet” flight to Toronto (one of the most common available options) is going to be 4 or more hours, and those seats are cramped. Sure, a four or five hour flight in an RJ isn’t going to kill you, but consider that those 4 or 5 hours in a regional jet seat may be the beginning (or end) of a very long trip stretching across multiple flights. No thank you, I’ll find another way.
Typical “travel expert” blog advice.
Thanks for sharing.
you are a gentleman, sir, and I enjoy your blog!
Bruhaha – I’d rather suffer a few hours on an RJ, if that saves me a ton of miles. I like Scott’s advice.
Scott – darn, you’ve discovered my secret :-). There’s also good availability in coach between LHR-Calgary and LHR-Vancouver.
Here’s an example of the “segment by segment” search technique: For a booking in July, when I tried to search SFO-LHR, ua.com showed nothing available at “saver” level. Then, looking segment by segment through Canadian gateways, I found I could construct a legal SFO-LHR routing with a six hour connection in Calgary. I could book it as part of a round trip using the “multi city” option. Then, later, when a better connection opened up through Toronto, I could make the change online. (In this case, I wanted to use my stopover on the return; I couldn’t do that on the Web. So I booked the return to my desired stopover point, then called Res and asked them to add the last segment. No charge if done within 24 hours.)
Thanks for giving that segment-by-segment example. Hopefully lots of people see it and replicate it. That’s exactly what I always preach and the value that an award booking service delivers if you don’t have the time/desire to do it.
[…] ← Route from the US to Europe via Canada for Better Award Space […]
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[…] direct award space from the West Coast to Europe is tough to find. (Solution: route via Canada.) This is such an exciting addition to the Star Alliance’s transatlantic routes because the […]
[…] direct award space from the West Coast to Europe is tough to find. (Solution: route via Canada.) This is such an exciting addition to the Star Alliance’s transatlantic routes because the […]
[…] the comments of yesterday’s post–Route from the US to Europe via Canada for Better Award Space–UA Phil gave a great example of an extremely simple segment-by-segment search he ran that […]
[…] Toronto (don’t forget about routing to Europe via Canada) […]