How One Cheap Flight Transformed Europe for Free. (October Update)

IT’S BEEN A BIG MONTH FOR EUROPE FOR FREE! I can’t believe I’m saying it, but we booked airfare and finalized our travel route. Only… it’s not what I’ve been thinking the trip would be for months now. I didn’t book through United and with it, didn’t receive any of the benefits I was looking forward to. Instead, after seeing dozens of unbelievable Scott’s Cheap Flights deals to Europe earlier this month, I found something that peaked my interested and capitalized on it to save 50,000 Chase points (at a minimum for an Economy round-trip) and booked our flights through the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal (more on that below). And because I booked our flights, I was able to finalize our travel itinerary. I have to admit, I’m really excited to share this month’s news.

Here’s my October Europe for Free update:

Booking Cheap Airfare with Points

Though my original plan was always to book airfare through United for roughly 66,000 miles a person in Economy – while also taking advantage of the United Excursionist Perk – highly discounted European airfare this month made me reconsider our original plan. And, after receiving numerous Europe deals from Scott’s Cheap Flights, I realized I needed to look at some travel options from both Kansas City and positioning in Chicago and New York City to save massive points.

TIP: Positioning flights to major hubs can save you hundreds and even thousands on your airfare. While I always look at airfare from my local airport, it's a great idea to consider hubs that are cheap for you to travel to.

While searching from Chicago for our general travel dates I came across a direct flight to Rome for $309 a person on American Airlines. Rome wasn’t on our destination list, but with cheap positioning flights to Chicago and adding a $400 upgrade to changeable tickets it only cost 75,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points for both our tickets. So, instead of 132,000 Chase points transferred to United for economy tickets, I used 75,000 in the Chase UR portal. This resulted in savings of more than 50,000 points.

But why did you decide not to have your lie-flat seat in Business Class and get a better cent per point redemption?! Yeah, I know. We originally discussed booking Business Class one-way and Economy the other on United. Cheap airfare really put a damper on that plan. But when you consider that the Business/Economy plan would have cost us 212,000 points, the points savings was well worth it. And though the cent per point redemption would be superior, I’m perfectly happy using 75,000 points because we have some other fall 2022 plans in the works that might involve Nepal and trekking and Mt. Everest Base Camp…. so those saved miles might come in handy. Plus, as my husband put it, “we’re economy people and we’ll always be economy people.”

The Not-So-Permanent Travel Itinerary

After booking our airfare to Rome, I had to reconsider the travel itinerary to fit the positioning location. Most of the trip remains the same but I extended the overall trip by a couple days to see Rome. When developing the itinerary, I went back to the basics I used when planning a month-long honeymoon in Southeast Asia. I printed out April and May 2022 calendars and marked travel dates and length of time at each destination. It was a lot easier this time because I knew I wanted to take advantage of IHG’s fourth night free with our Premier Rewards card and only had limited points to use for each stay.

Largely, the itinerary is a structurally sound framework. It will most likely morph from now until final hotel bookings but it’s a good place to start.

The Big Picture
From start to finish, the trip will last 37 days.
We'll be traveling through 12 countries. 
Two countries, Montenegro and the Vatican are day trips. 
Once in Europe, we'll take 5 flights and many train rides including the night train in Ukraine.
Our IHG card bonuses alone will give us 17 of our 35 nights free. (2 nights we won't be in hotels - train and plane!)

Below is a basic outline of our trip. Like I said earlier, the addition of Rome is awesome but resulted in a couple changes in the original plan. I tried to create the trip with enough time in each city based on the things we want to do.