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Trip Introduction: Christmas Market Villages in Germany via British Airways and Lufthansa First Class

MrsWT73 has a yearly business meeting in Hanover, Germany every year at the end of the year. From a North American perspective, it’s a bizarre time for business travel but their company seems to get into it. She had asked me to tag along for an opportunity to visit the Christmas villages of Germany for some Glühwein wine. Since no one is traveling the weeks before Christmas for leisure purposes, and most North American business travel seems to wind down in December, there was ample award availability.

Planning:

Without any real difficulty, I was able to find a British Airways First Class award from Vancouver to London Heathrow. This was booked at about 6 months out and cost me 70,000 Alaska Mileage Plan points and $433 USD in taxes and fees. I locked in a placeholder return with Air Canadas’ Aeroplan departing Munich on Swiss Air via Zurich & Los Angeles to Vancouver in Business Class. I intended to change this to a Lufthansa First Class Ticket and self routed via Los Angeles to maximize the First Class opportunities with a tag flight back up to Vancouver afterwards. I figured that with 16 seats leaving Munich (Los Angeles / San Franciso) and 16 seats leaving Frankfurt (Los Angeles / San Franciso), I would hopefully be able to find something within those 32 available seats for sale. On the evening I was supposed to head out to the airport, at about T – 10 days, the Lufthansa First Class space opened up. I called and was able to switch the flight with the $150 CAD fee. With that, I headed off straight to the airport for another great and civilized trip.

Routing:

The routing ended up looking like this:

YVR-LHR-MUC (Alaska Mileage Plan Award)
MUC Hbf – HAN Hbf (paid)
HAN Hbf – MUC Hbf (paid)
MUC-HAN-ZRH-LAZ-YVR (Aeroplan Award)

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I hope you will enjoy following along on another First Class winter adventure!!