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Overview
Ah, London. You ugly, beautiful, ancient, modern contradiction of a city. The Big Smoke has positioned itself at the heart of the world’s tos-and-fros for centuries, fostering innovation, culture, and art, all while spending the better part of the last millennium as the planet’s defacto business capital.
While things are a little different now, the city is as exciting as ever. History and modernity rub shoulders on every corner, and it’s bursting with more blockbuster attractions than a two-week itinerary can hold. But don’t worry if you’ve already been—it retains more than enough mystery to validate multiple return visits.
But there’s no denying it’s expensive. Cutting your spending when possible is always a plus, and where better to start than your business class flights to London? Because why wouldn’t you be flying business class?
Let’s take a deep dive into how to score business class flights to London using points and miles.
The Point:
Finding business class flights to London isn’t the problem. Avoiding the high taxes, fees, and surcharges is. Whether you’re seeking high points value or minimum cash spend, leave no rock unturned in your quest to find the best flights.
Our top card rec:
Before you start searching for business class flights to London
Let’s deal with the elephant in the room: the UK’s damn fees.
There’s no getting around it. The UK might have the worst fees and surcharges in the points and miles world. It’s made worse by its homegrown carriers like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic’s excessive fuel surcharges that often end up costing as much as a flight itself.
There are a few ways to work around this, which we’ll look at in the article, but don’t be surprised when you make your first search and see a $1,000+ fee on top of your points.
Considering these fees, there are a few important things to remember.
Are you maximizing your points value or saving as much cash as possible?
This is a key question that will help dictate which option works best for you. It’s more than possible to take advantage of an excellent points rate with some high fees and still come out with a strong points value. But whether that’s the goal for you or not is another question. On the other hand, paying more points but avoiding those fees at all costs might be the end goal for you.
There’s no correct answer—it’s all up to you.
Convenience over competence
Again, we’ll be providing you with some options that require you to work a little outside the box. That means your travel day won’t necessarily be as simple as a one-and-done flight. You might be re-routing through other airports or redeeming multiple bookings. If wasting time is a no-no, and you want to step off one plane and be done with it, you may have to concede some points or cash to earn the privilege.
Get creative
This one can be slightly more complicated, as you’re effectively using the same principle as the stopover, but doing it yourself. Dublin serves as a good example of this again. If you can find a cheap mode of transport, whether that’s using a budget airline like Ryanair, or taking the train/ferry to other countries, it’s possible for you to dodge the fees in London.
Of course, you need to ensure whatever you spend to get to the destination doesn’t cost the same or more than the fees would have been for you.
How to find business class flights to London
Finding business class flights to London using points isn’t terribly hard. Getting as much value from them is slightly trickier, and you can expect the award availability to decrease in correlation with the fees and surcharges attached.
As with any search, we recommend you do some recon on the flights leaving your own airport to check the rough cash prices for the dates you want to travel. Don’t search for “Heathrow.” Search for all London airports. We’d also recommend being as flexible as possible with dates and airlines, as well as giving yourself a good amount of time before your intended departure. The earlier the better in most cases.
British Airways Avios
We’ll start with the most obvious option, the UK’s flagship carrier, British Airways. The biggest plus to using BA is that award availability is pretty damn easy to come by. Every search I performed from upcoming dates all the way to March 2025 generated business class seats we could redeem.
As I mentioned before, the fees are higher than we’d like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a terrible deal. If we check out the two shown in the picture from NYC and LA, we see 80,000 and 90,000 Avios redemptions plus $350 from New York and $406 from LA. Considering the value of the LA flight is $2,983, we’re still getting around 2.86 cents per point.
If we’re talking value, this is still good and $406 for 10-hour business class flights to London is a pretty solid saving by anyone’s standards. Going the opposite way, those fees rise to $450 for the LAX flight, so you’re looking at 180,000 points plus $900 in fees.
How to earn Avios points
British Airways Avios are some of the easiest points to earn. Almost all the major credit card issuers transfer points to the airline. In fact, even Citi transfers to Qatar Airways which in turn allows points to move between itself and British Airways. It’s easy to throw a combination of different points and miles from Amex, Chase, Capital One, and Citi.
Our top recommendation:
American Airlines AAdvantage Miles
American Airlines is one of British Airways’ closest partners. In fact, the relationship gifts BA some of its best sweet spots—in particular, short-haul flights on AA.
In this case, American is an incredible choice for flights into London. It also shows British Airways flights in its searches, so you can see how mad you would be to opt for the British carrier over American.
Use American’s handy calendar tool to search for broad dates and see the lowest rates for each day. A quick glance shows plenty of availability for 54,400 AAdvantage miles. That’s a good deal less than the BA option, and with only $5.60 in taxes, it’s an outstanding value.
The fees do rise to over $300 for the return leg, but that’s still half the fees you’d incur on British Airways.
How to earn AAdvantage miles
The only downside to American Airlines is that its AAdvantage program isn’t as easy to earn points as other airlines. There are currently no credit card companies that allow transfers to the airline, so you’re stuck with flying with the airline and its partners or opening a co-branded card like the CITI® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®.
Its intro bonus will leave you just short of a one-way flight to London, but considering the $2,500 spending threshold required, it shouldn’t take much more to go beyond that figure.
Our top recommendation:
All Nippon Airways (ANA)
Next up is Japanese flagship carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA), and its incredible award chart. The airline is arguably the highest-value program out there and can be wrangled into incredible high-value redemptions.
The only downside to ANA is that it’s only possible to book roundtrip award tickets. This removes some of the flexibility you could have to avoid fees. With that said, its rates are excellent and the fees remain remarkably low.
According to the ANA award chart, you can book roundtrip flights from the US to Europe for 100,000 miles plus taxes and fees. In my quick search, that checked out perfectly, with a roundtrip coming in at that rate plus $333.90. The flight itself is with United, so you could end up in its excellent Polaris class seat.
At 50,000 points each way, it’s clocking in almost 10,000 miles less than American Airlines with comparable fees. To book those flights with United would cost around $3,000.
How to earn ANA Mileage Club points:
One major difference between AAdvantage and ANA Mileage Club is the latter’s ability to receive miles from American Express. Opening a card like the The Platinum Card® from American Express gifts you transferable points you can move to ANA when the time is right. If you don’t need to use ANA, you can move them to any of Amex’s other partners to achieve maximum value. American’s miles are limited to its own airline and can’t be transferred.
Our top recommendation:
United Airlines
United operates a ton of flights between the US and London, so grabbing a spot in its coveted Polaris class is easy in terms of availability. Whether you opt for it will depend on the points you have at your disposal. United operates a dynamic system, so the miles required can fluctuate pretty heavily, but the average saver rate sits at around 80,000 miles each way.
The taxes and fees on the way there are a negligible $5.60 while the return leg shoots to around $328. The cash requirement matches that of ANA and American but represents a considerably lower value. It’ll set you back 60,000 points less to fly United by booking with ANA.
How to earn UnitedMileage Plus points:
You should only opt to redeem these flights with United over ANA or American if you’re tied to a Chase card.
Our top recommendation:
- The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve® intro offers would get you close to the points needed to book, but not all the way there.
Before you book
Finding business class flights to London isn’t hard. New York sees as many as 36 direct flights a day to the British capital, while Boston, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and more all fly multiple flights a day.
On top of that, there’s more than one airport to fly into. Heathrow may be the most well-known and busiest, but there are six airports servicing London: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, London City, Luton, and Southend.
There are a few creative ways to cut costs—though they may require extra time. One of the best strategies is taking advantage of airline stopover programs. For example, with United’s Excursionist Perk, you could book a free stopover in Dublin before continuing to London, avoiding high UK departure fees on your return flight. Since taxes and fees from Dublin are significantly lower, this could save you a decent chunk of money compared to flying directly in and out of London.
If you prefer a more straightforward itinerary, plenty of airlines offer nonstop flights between NYC and London, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, American, Delta, and United. Prices typically range from $300 to $900 round-trip, depending on the season and how early you book.
However, if you’re open to layovers, budget carriers and alternate routes through European hubs can often bring costs even lower. Services like Dollar Flight Club can help you track deals, with occasional one-way fares under $300—especially if you’re flexible with travel dates.
by your friends at The Daily Navigator
