Guide to Flying to Europe On Points

Europe is the first place I ever redeemed my credit cards points! And flying to Europe is one of the most common goals I hear (neck and neck with Hawaii). There are so many options for airlines, points, and alliances — and taxes and fees vary greatly. Use this guide to help you figure out which strategy works best for you.

If you’re new to booking flights with points, be sure to check out this overview for important background information. You can also sign up for our free course. You’ll want to be sure you understand how to find the best routes, price compare with Google Flights, how to search for available flights, and how to leverage transfer partners and airline alliances.

August 2025 updates:

The United excursionist perk has now ended.

September 2025 updates:

As of September 16, 2025, the transfer ratio from American Express to Emirates has changed. The current rate is 5:4. That means if you transfer 5,000 Amex points to Emirates, you will receive 4,000 Emirates miles.

As of September 30, 2025, the partnership between JetBlue and TAP Portugal has ended.

November 2025 updates:

On November 1, 2025, Singapore Airlines made some changes to its award chart. The post has been updated to reflect the current pricing.

Earn More Points

Each airline option I list in this article has more than one credit card that can earn you a welcome bonus and the points you need to fly to Europe. This article is already long enough without listing out every single card you could get for each of these programs to earn points.

So how can you figure out how to earn the right points? First step: get my free airline transfer partner guide — inside I have a chart that shows which kinds of points transfer to which airlines. Then work backwards! Let’s say you figure out that you want to fly on United but you want to book via Aeroplan (this article explains exactly how to do that).

You can look at the chart in my Travel Points 201 guide and see that American Express Membership Rewards®, Chase Ultimate Rewards®, and Capital One miles all transfer 1:1 to Air Canada Aeroplan. Then you could browse my Best Offers page, where I list all my favorite current offers–to see which cards currently have good bonuses and earn those kinds of points.

Pro Tip: Transfer Bonuses

Most points transfer 1:1 when you transfer from a program like Chase Ultimate Rewards® to an airline or hotel. But! Banks run promos throughout the year and certain transfers may offer a bonus. I don’t currently maintain an updated list of transfer bonuses but you can find one here.

Routing Tips for Europe

It’s important to take into consideration the flight routes from your home airport, as influences which strategy and sweet spots make the most sense for you to focus in on. We almost always prioritize non-stop flights and that influences how we plan our trips and destinations.

This is also important because once get to Europe, flights are so cheap to hop around Europe on budget airlines like RyanAir or EasyJet. Like as cheap as $20. Because of this, I recommend focusing your strategy on how to get to Europe from your home airport. Enjoy a day or two wherever you land (bonus mini vacation!) and then continue on to your final destination.

If you’re based by a smaller airport, you will likely need to have one stop in order to get to Europe. Check out this overview for important background information on how to find good routes to book with points.

You’ll notice a lot of the routes to Europe are seasonal. From Chicago, for instance, there are only nonstop flights to Rome from about April-October.

If you have a specific destination in mind and your airport has a nonstop flight to that destination — that’s a great way to focus in on your strategy and begin to work out the cheapest way to book that route with points.

Airlines I avoid

As a general rule, I strive to keep my taxes and fees as low as possible for my award flights. British Airways tacks on fuel surcharges when you book with points that can be in the hundreds of dollars — so I avoid flying on them!

A round trip from Atlanta to London on British Airways will cost 55,000 points + over $400 in taxes and fees. This may still be worthwhile in some situations–maybe in a peak season or for last minute travel. But that’s a high price considering that prices in the $400s for round trips to Europe are pretty common during sales.

Top Three Options: Bank Portals, American Airlines, Route Sweet Spots

There are lots of great options for flying to Europe with points but I wanted to pick a few easy ones here to pull out. Europe is a great goal to have early on in your points journey because it isn’t that hard to accumulate points to get there — even for a family! What makes the most sense for you may depend on your home airport and preferred routings. Keep in mind that you can use one airline alliance one direction and a different one on the return.

Using Your Points in a Bank Portal

I’d say this is the most underrated option by many points enthusiasts. Flight sales to Europe are very common. You can routinely expect to see flights in the $400s. Not all the time, of course, but fare sales often trigger competing fare sales.

To find cheap flights, you can sign up for a flight alert service like Going or set up alerts for free on Google Flights. You can also use the Google Flights Explore feature to search in a very flexible way — this is a search from Chicago to all of Europe for a one week trip in the next 6 months.

If you had the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, and bought a $500 ticket, you’d pay 40,000 points per ticket via Chase Travel℠. That’s a good price especially because you have incorporated your taxes and fees into your ticket price. But keep in mind that anytime you are going to redeem more than 60,000 points in Chase Travel℠, you will come out ahead by upgrading to a Chase Sapphire Reserve® due to the higher redemption rate.

A $500 ticket booked with a Sapphire Reserve will use just 33,000 Ultimate Rewards® points.

Or you could book this on Capital One Travel and you’d earn 5x points for booking via Capital One Travel. That will earn you 2500 Venture miles. Then you could use 50,000 Venture miles to cover the purchase — or even redeem part of the $300 Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card annual credit to help offset the cost.

Keep in mind: booking through a bank travel portal is booking through a third party and any changes need to be made via Chase Travel℠, Capital One Travel, etc. We frequently have used this to book cheap cash fares and haven’t had any serious issues.

Another pro tip: you’ll also earn airline miles on this reservation if you add your loyalty account number to the reservation.

Sample Card Strategy for a Family of Four

Stockpile Chase Ultimate Rewards and Capital One Venture miles. If you follow my Three Year Plan, you’d earn enough points just in the first year! And if you decide you want to book another way, you’ll still be able to use these points for other airline options.

• Open cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards®. A great option are the Chase Ink family of cards.
• Open cards that earn Capital One miles. One of my favorites for perks is the Capital One Venture X (earn 75,000 miles) but you can also earn 75,000 miles with a $95 fee Capital One Venture card.

Using American Airlines Miles

American Airlines uses dynamic pricing which means prices in points can go up and down. But it’s still fairly common to see prices for 45,000 round trip. Sometimes even less! Traveling in peak season may cost more. You’ll want to avoid flights on their partner British Airways, which has high fuel surcharges.

A valuable tool for flexible travelers is the AA Award Map. This map allows you to search for award flights by region based on the number of miles you have available.

Sample Card Strategy for a Family of Four

American Airlines miles are relatively easy to earn via credit card bonuses because both Citi and Barclay issue them. You’d need about 200,000 AA miles for 4 people to fly round trip from the US to Europe. How can you get that? Earn the following sign up bonuses (these were current as of May 2025).

• AAdvantage^® Aviator^® Mastercard 70,000 miles- Each parent can get 1 of these. That’s already 140,000 miles!
• CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® – 75,000 miles – Each parent can get one of these. That’s another 150,000 miles! Alternatively, you could get the personal version of this card.

Focus on destination sweet spots

Europe has the most quirks of any region when it comes to award pricing. Where you’re flying from and where you’re flying to can make a big difference in the best routes available to you. Because of that, there really isn’t one best option!