Prague is one of the best destination cities on the planet. It’s at the heart of everything “European”, offering flair from both East and West. If you’re headed East, like… Far East, it’s also the ideal place to start your trip. Why? Because There’s a pretty incredible opportunity to use your credit card points or airlines miles, just 52,000 points for 22 hours of blissful business class to Seoul, South Korea. Don’t worry, we’ll explain everything you need to know…
We thought you might be! Czech Airlines operates a direct flight from it’s capital city of Prague to Seoul, South Korea. The flight is actually operated by a leased Korean Airlines plane, offering Korean Airlines flat bed business class seats. Now here’s the clever part: Czech Airlines partners with Etihad Airways “Etihad Guest” loyalty program. If you book these Czech Airlines flights through Etihad, whose points you can instantly create with your American Express or Citi cards, by flying, or by purchasing points at a discount, you can fly round trip for a mere 52,000 points. Or one way for just half!
Etihad Guest points can be instantly created using American Express Membership Rewards Points, Citi Thank You Points, by flying with Etihad and their partners or finally, by purchasing Etihad Guest points, directly from the airline. Basically, there are a ton of ways to accrue the points you need, many of which can happen instantly! If you want to buy points, Etihad often has lucrative sales, which you can check out here. For reference: a one way, purchasing all the points would still be less than $1000 all in. The almost free and easy way here is definitely going to be your credit card points. See, we weren’t kidding when we said transferrable credit card points are the best!
Smart. 52,000 points for 22 hours of blissful flying is an absolute bargain these days. It’s so good, you could even call it a hack! Who would ever think to transfer credit card points, to an Abu Dhabi based airline, to fly on a Czech airline to South Korea. First you need to find availability. You can try calling Etihad Guest and seeing if a nice agent will help, or if you want to be proactive, you can use the KLM website to search. You’ll need to create a free FlyingBlue account to do so, which is a good idea anyway. Look for availability on Czech Airlines flights 190/191.If you’re willing to pay a nominal fee, you can alternately have travel Guru Matthew Klint do the searching for you. Flexibility is key. You’ll end up paying around $200 in taxes one way, or $400 round trip. Just call Etihad Guest to complete your booking once you’ve got dates, or want to spin the wheel and see if they will help find dates!
Awesome piece! Thanks for putting this together. Etihad, BA and ANA are probably the most under rated programs. Makes more and more sense with every passing day to ditch US airline cards and put spending on Amex MR, SPG, Chase UR cards.
This has been discussed on FT for some time. It’s not a hack (hate that term anyway) it’s just a sweet spot in their chart.
More importantly, you should also alert your readers that when it comes to redeeming partner awards, Etihad’s agents range from completely clueless to barely competent. While one can find some booking success stories on FT and other blogs, there are at least an equal number of failure stories. It’s not impossible, but it’s not a quick and easy matter either. Someone wanting to go this route should take due diligence and understand the pitfalls before transferring miles and potentially being disappointed in the end.
Eric, this is one of those comments that I just don’t know how to process. Most people don’t read flyertalk, and most people would never think of doing this. For what it’s worth, I never saw it on Flyertalk and haven’t seen any discussions like it on there personally. People want inspiration and ideas, and I stand by my statement of who would think of using credit card points to transfer to an unrelated airline, to fly on another unrelated airline. It may sound elementary to you- but you’re not who I’m writing for if it is. Enjoy your day.
Eric: Agreed on the word hack — way over used these days.
GSTP: Regarding FT, I spent quite a bit of time on FT but there are so many threads that I have never seen this before, so this was a good starting point. But as Eric pointed out, the more I thought about this and did some more digging since yesterday, I am not sure how good the risk to reward is in this case. I can easily transfer points from Amex, but then I am reliant on the agent at Etihand. The problem is that if I am unable to make specific reservations, these miles expire pretty quickly.
For instance, I am trying to book USM to SIN for early next year. I can transfer the require miles but if I am unable to make reservations through Etihad and these award spaces become available on Singapore Airlines or United, I will have to now find creative ways to use these Guest miles in the next two years. Unless I am easily able to book partner awards through their Website, this program is as good or as bad as Virgin Atlantic.
Lol GSTP continues grasping towards relevance what with the ‘Catch me’ gimmick and this Trump-speak “Beautiful Opportunity”.
Stick to your wheelhouse of angry screeds towards Benjamin Schlappig and Alex Cruz and of course fighting with the commenters on the Mail Online website.
I’m genuinely sorry that you’ve had so much sadness, disapproval and anger brought into your life that you find this completely irrelevant style of engagement of any use.
The lowest i can find on KLM website from PRG to ICN is 100.000 miles one way, also for far departures (8-10 months from now), am i doing something wrong?
Wait did I miss something? Live and Let’s Fly & GSTP collab??
that’s lit
Haha. I’m a big fan of Matthew. He knows his stuff. I enjoy reading his site and hope he does the same. Cool dude. Cheers Matt.
I am one of the many that don’t have the time to sift through all the content on FT so this blog & Turning Left have been valuable resources based on my travel pattern.
Thank You. I appreciate all the effort put into these articles.