Business Platinum Card from American Express
130,000 MR points
Planning a Balkan Hopper Trip with Aeroplan
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Business Platinum Card from American Express
- Earn 90,000 MR points upon spending $15,000 in the first three months
- Plus, earn 40,000 MR points upon making a purchase in months 14–17 as a cardholder
- And, earn 1.25x MR points on all purchases
- Also, receive a $200 annual travel credit
- Transfer MR points to Aeroplan and other frequent flyer programs for premium flights
- Unlimited airport lounge access for you and one guest at Priority Pass, Plaza Premium, Centurion, and other lounges
- Credits and rebates for business expenses throughout the year with Amex Offers
- Bonus MR points for referring family and friends
- Qualify for the card as a sole proprietor
- Annual fee: $799
12 Comments
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Now, you just have to hope that none of the flights get cancelled or rescheduled to mess everything up!
Hi Ricky,
Nice blog post. Out of curiosity, why did you decide to spend more Aeroplan miles to fly basically the same economy class seat for short hops around Europe? My gut feeling is telling me that Aegean economy class award seats are much more readily available vs biz class. In that sense you might be able to visit Sofia and/or Tirana which were on your original list of cities you’d like to check out. Also, if you were to fly all the way to the Azores, it’ll be interesting to see how long the luggage tag is going to read if you’re checking a luggage from OTP to Ponta Delgada! That’ll surely be Instagram worthy!
The way I look at it, even though the seat is going to be virtually the same, the added personal space, slightly better service, and more seamless airport experience (for example the dedicated airport bus for business class passengers when you disembark at a remote stand) would be easily worth the extra 15,000 Aeroplan miles over the course of six days. As for checking bags, that’s just asking for trouble somewhere along the way! 🙂
Let me first start off my acknowledging this is an impressive example of optimizing routing rules of a FF program and maximizing points redemption value. But let’s be honest, itineraries like this don’t allow a traveler sufficient time to actually experience anything meaningful in terms of the culture and history of a city and are extremely tiring and potentially stressful due to the constant commuting between airports and hotels, checking in and out of both, packing up belongings, ensuring one doesn’t miss a connection, etc. Personally, I have flown to and from many of these European cities for between $10-$50 on ULCCs like Wizzair, EasyJet, and Ryanair with itineraries that allow several days in between. The hard product on Business class flights within Europe are basically no different than Economy (minus the blocked middle seat) and most lounges can be accessed with Priority Pass and star alliance gold status. Anyways, apologies if I’m sounding a bit negative but I just don’t see how such an itinerary can be enjoyable, especially if you’re traveling with a significant other. Just think of all the conflicts and fights you many have seen watching old episodes of The Amazing Race.
Dude, you’re absolutely right. I couldn’t hope to fully absorb and understand any of these places in the span of one day. But when it comes to my travel style, variety is truly the spice of life, and I figured that getting to see these places for one sunset and one sunrise was better than not getting to see them at all – especially if I can do so without having to sit through Wizz Air flights. As for the stress and fatigue, well, that’s all part of the journey – if you’ve been following my travels you’ll know that I get almost as much pleasure out of the sense of "being on the move" as being on the ground itself.
This type of trip definitely isn’t for everyone. For example, my girlfriend Jessy would loathe every second of it, which is why I only do "hoppers" when I’m travelling on my own.
Hey Ricky,
What are the risks of dropping the last flight? I have the same thing in a mRTW (last flight dropped), however, I have another flight booked out of the same airport on a different airline to a different destination.
In my opinion, there truly aren’t many risks, as long as you aren’t doing this every week or something.
In theory you could get rerouted to your "final" destination by the airline in the case of IRROPs, but scheduling the throwaway leg for the next day should around that.
Great post! You should do one on doing a “South pacific hopper” on Aeroplan (or/and Avios) if such a thing is feasible!
Amazing journey…..but don’t you have another 1,222 miles of available travel remaining ? Maybe take in a few more EURO 2020 games or is there a segment limit for one way travel ? Looks like a myriad of lounge sampling is in order as well. Google flights map also works very well for trip planning. Select departure city, the airline alliance and number of stops from options, then select a destination to see flights/times. Well done. Looking forward to the reports.
Enjoy.
I’ve got about 300 miles to spare until I hit the OTP-PDL MPM, so not a lot of wiggle room left. Definitely looking forward to the lounge-hopping, although I can’t say many of the lounges in the region are likely to blow me away!
I love it when Ricky plans a trip like this. On the surface, it seems simple.
Bucharest to Bilbao, check out a couple of soccer games. Then he manages to extend it into a major European trip. Still pretty cheap and business class to boot. However, he sees a great part of Europe, places us regular people might not get to without the push of seeing something different from this blog even though, from many comments, there seems to be a lot of readers who do travel this way. More power to you!
I am looking forward to the next installment.
We still do not know how he gets to Europe, how he gets to St Petersburg or how he gets home. Great!
And…..he’s done it yet agian 🙂