Free Flights to Europe via United

Oktoberfest in Munich, so many giant beers and giant pretzels

100% honesty upfront, that title's technically not true because of taxes/minor fees but let's be real here, we all want to game the system the best we can and if you want a virtually free trip to Europe, I'm pretty sure this is the easiest way you can possibly go about it at the moment. As an example for this post, I was talking to a friend about a trip to Munich for Oktoberfest this year which obviously is a very high demand time for Munich even though it is beginning to get pretty cold in Europe around that time of year. The opening bell rings at Noon on Saturday, 9/19 so the flight from NYC would have to take off on Friday night 9/18 at the very latest. I thought I would put myself to the test and see what I could do for him tonight. With free points and knowing United's award system, we can make this an almost free trip to Munich, Zagreb, and Frankfurt.

I chose these 3 destinations because first off, Oktoberfest, but also I really want to see the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia which are semi-nearby Zagreb while maybe making my way down to Split on my own. I could catch a semi cheap (about $150) flight from Split to Frankfurt if need be or could just chill in Zagreb all week until my flight out of Frankfurt. Slovenia is another very close option, perhaps venturing to Lake Bled, but really there are a million directions you could take that week. Frankfurt is on the back end only because I knew it was a hub for Lufthansa and figured there would be a lot of award availability for the sake of this exercise.

For reference, the legs I decided on for this example are as follows:

1) NYC -> Munich on 9/18
2) Munich -> Zagreb on 9/21
3) Frankfurt -> NYC on 9/28

The first thing we have to take note of in this are the rules of United's award redemptions. Typically, within Europe, their economy "Saver" awards (the blue ones when you search) are 30k points so if you book a round trip that ends up being 60k points. There are some additional rules to this however, where you can actually book 1 stopover (in our case Munich) and 2 open jaws (only 1 in our case, Frankfurt to NYC) for no additional points. A stopover is any layover that lasts for more than 24 hours and an open jaw is basically a random flight that the airline has no say in how you get from one leg of your trip to another leg, in this case Zagreb to Frankfurt we have to find our own way as I mentioned above.

Once we understand the rules of United's game, we can start to play and fiddle around with their handy online multiple destinations tool (seen below). Simply fill in your dates and cities and select "Award Travel" at the bottom before you click Search.

Make sure to check Award Travel at the bottom here!

From here, it will show you all available flights for each leg that have award space on them. You would only be looking for the economy Saver version (blue button) as those are the 30k ones despite them not saying anything as you select. If the cheap awards are not showing up, you will have to change your dates at the bottom of the page for the first flight until you find a day that has availability and shift around the other days accordingly.

So after finding dates that work with award availability, we can go to the final screen and actually book as seen in my example screenshot below.

60k Miles + $157 in fees/taxes, not bad for 3 flights

As a note, this is not completely free as you have to pay some taxes and fees which in this case add up to around $150. You can find potentially cheaper fees or go to more destinations (1 more open jaw) if you play around with their site more but this was a quick example that I found. In addition, some awards can more easily (or only) be booked over the phone but there is a booking fee of around $25 if you go that route.

To put this into perspective, most point value systems let you redeem points for only 1 point per 1 cent of airfare. In our example, those same flights priced out together would be $1,000+. So that fare minus the $150 fee we are forced to pay gives us a return of about 1 point per 1.5 cents of airfare, not fantastic but much better than the minimum and like I said, you can find better if you play around with the tool for awhile.

$1,093 for our mostly free award trip

The last question that remains is how do we get these 60k points? Well the answer there is quite easy at least until 6/2 as United and Chase currently have a credit card sign up bonus of 50k points if you spend $3k on the card in the first 3 months. The annual fee is waived for the first year and if I'm honest, the point values towards purchase are not that great but if you pair these with your Sapphire and/or Freedom points (free transfer of Chase points to United miles) then you will get those extra 10k points you need for 60k in no time at all.

You can always cancel the card just before the annual fee shows up if you need to but you also get priority boarding, 2 United Club passes and a free checked bag if you tend to fly United semi frequently which could prove valuable for the $95 annual fee.

After you do all of that fun stuff, you can go to Europe virtually for free while seeing quite a few cities! If you really want to be a stickler, I think in the end my quick example trip would end up costing you around $300 in airfare but for 3-4 cities in Europe, I would pay that any day and I hope you would too. My example can be bested fairly easily so please plan your own trip and let me know what you are able to book in the comments below!