BOOKED: Wieder nach Wien, flying Singapore Airlines and Condor Business Class!

Coming right out of the holiday season and our trip to South Africa basically setup, my husband and I have turned our attention to our Thanksgiving trip. As some of you may know, we like to take two longer vacation of 1-2 weeks every year. One of these is typically a Euro trip, and the other to a further-away destination. As such, in 2025 we went to Switzerland and Thailand, for example. As I’ve posted before, in May we will visit South Africa and so now we are planning our Euro trip. Let me tell you more about what we have planned…

To book business class flights with points, you’re either flexible with your dates, or with your destination

I’ve said this before, and it sure was applicable to this trip: you’re either flexible about your dates, or with your destination (and if possible, both!).

Originally we had actually planned to visit Greece. Neither my husband or myself had ever been, and November in the Greek sun seemed like a lively plan. About a year ago I had started checking award flight availability, specifically through Flying Blue. At the time, it was quite easy to find business class availability for 50.000-60.000 points per person to destination beyond Amsterdam or Paris. Unfortunately, it seems getting such award flights for that price is exceedingly difficult.

So, instead of looking for flights to Athens, I decided to cast a wider net. Ultimately that led us to some fun business class flights, which I will describe below.

We’re going to Vienna!

I like to use Seats.Aero to look for flights, and more recently, also PointsYeah. While the former is fast and allows to search for many dates and flight combinations at a time, it is limited in that it works best for direct flights or simple one-stop destinations. PointsYeah is much less flexible but that have itineraries that may not show up on Seats.Aero. The key with either of these is to use their ‘explore’ or ‘daydream’ modes, so you’re not boxed into a certain origin-destination pairing, but can look at a variety of origins and destinations in one fell swoop. Ultimately, all of that put us on track to Vienna!

Personally, I love Vienna. I had a chance to study there for a month, and enjoyed it so much I returned the next year. Between the beautiful architecture along the ring, the excellent museums, opera and theatre, and the schnitzels and cakes, it is a beautiful city.

So, what flights did we book?

*I’m excited to stroll through Vienna again!*

First, we fly Singapore Airlines business class to Frankfurt

I’m thrilled that we will first be flying Singapore Airlines to Frankfurt. This is the return leg of the Singapore Airlines flight from Frankfurt to JFK that we flew in May 2025, which I also reviewed. That was a fantastic flight! Above all, the service was truly exceptional. The crew was kind, friendly and generous, and it was a pleasure to witness their well-orchestrated yet personable service flow. I’m excited to now fly the East-bound leg, to see how the redeye service flow compares. Will a full service be prioritized over sleep or vice versa? Of course I will review this flight.

Also of note: Singapore Airlines sends its business class passengers to the Capital One lounge at JFK’s Terminal 4. I’ve not had the chance to visit a Capital One lounge yet, so I’m quite excited to visit this. Of course I will review this as well.

We booked this flight for 60.000 points and 80 CAD per person on Air Canada. We transferred these points from Chase Ultimate Rewards, and the transfer went through instantly.

Remarkably, Singapore Airlines business class award availability for JFK-FRA or FRA-JFK had been scarce lately, but recently a swath of seats became available. So book it now if you’re interested in this redemption! It is well worth it!

Ultimately, we fly back from Vienna via Frankfurt in Condor business class: an excellently cheap redemption oppertunity

Ironically, the flight back is how the trip to Vienna started, which probably sounds confusing. The reason we ‘landed’ on Vienna was because I had found a cheap flight to Vienna, from JFK, via Alaska Atmos, on Condor business class. However, it was later that Singapore Airlines business class award availability suddenly opened up for the rest of the year. We found about this through findflightsforme, an account that I’d recommend following on Instagram. I quickly checked to see if the Condor flight would work on the return leg, and in fact it did, so I rebooked our original flight to be the flight back.

So Condor is an funny little airline. Based in Germany, they are not so well known. For the longest time they basically functioned as Lufthansa’s leisure subsidiary, but actually they are an independent company and for the last few years have been trying to compete head-on with Lufthansa, by flying to some major markets from their base in Frankfurt. For a long time, Lufthansa provided connecting flights from Frankfurt to other cities in Europe, because there was a legal stipulation for them to do so. This was recently abolished, however, which now brings Condor to offer its own connecting flights. Three of these destinations are Milan, Munich, and… Vienna!

Condor business class is a staggered, lie-flat business class seat in a 1-2-1 configuration. So by all means. it’s a rather modern setup that, ironically, is actually better than what Lufthansa still has on the majority of its fleet. I look forward to seeing what this is all about.

The price was terrific: we booked 2 seats in Condor business class for 45.000 Alaska Atmos points and 117 USD per person. This is exceedingly cheap for a transatlantic flight, and a great redemption option for flights between the US and Europe.

Note that if you’d bought this same flight just to Frankfurt, you’d have spent 135.000 points per person: it’s often worth looking for flights not to the major city of your destination, but as a connection to a different city. This can truly saved you tens of thousands of points.

One little ‘gotcha’ though: our flight from Vienna to Frankfurt is in economy, unfortunately, as only the ‘mixed cabin’ itinerary was available.

We haven’t decided what exactly to do in-between: two ideas

Obviously there is a bit of a gap between our flight to Frankfurt and our departure from Vienna. How exactly we want to fill in that space we’re not so sure yet, but we float two ideas:

Either we could fly to Munich, rent a car there, and then drive to Vienna. We will pass by Salzburg and perhaps one or two other places in Austria while along the way.
The other possibility is to fly to Milan, which we had meant to visit during our Switzerland trip. We will then rent a car there and make our way through Northern Italy, perhaps visiting Lake Como and Venice, then head to Graz and ending in Vienna.

In either plan, we’re likely to spent 3 days/4 fights in Vienna. Let me know if you have any specific ideas!

These are the reviews you can expect from this trip

I’ve broadly talked about what I will review, but here is a specific list of what I’ll be planning to review, based on our current itinerary:

The Capital One Lounge at New York-JFK Terminal 4: Singapore Airlines sends its premium passengers departing from JFK to the Capital One lounge, a lounge I’ve been wanting to visit for quite some time. This is one of the newest lounges at JFK’s Terminal 4, and should be a great place to visit.
Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Business Class JFK-FRA: I’ve already reviewed Singapore Airlines’ business class on this route, but I did so on the leg FRA-JFK, which was a day flight. This leg is the transatlantic redeye, and I’m curious how the service flow will differ, hence I will review it again.
Lufthansa Business Lounge West at Frankfurt FRA Terminal 1: Before we flew Singapore Airlines last year on the FRA-JFK leg, we visited both the Lufthansa Lounge Ost and the Maple Leaf Lounge, and I thought the Maple Leaf Lounge was superior. Flying Condor we can’t get into the Maple Leaf lounge given that Condor isn’ actually a Star Alliance airline. However we can still enter the Lufthansa Lounges, so this time I mean to visit the Lufthansa Business Lounge West.
Condor A330-900NEO Business Class FRA-JFK: This will be the ‘true’ new flight experience this trip. Condor was known as a leisure airline for a long time but over the last few years they have tried to compete head-on with Lufthansa. Their A330-900NEO aircraft have what looks like a comfortable business class seat in a 1-2-1 configuration, so I’m quite curious to try this out for myself.

Summary

We are currently planning our Thanksgiving trip to Europe, and have landed on Vienna, for a large part due to some very nice points redemption opportunities that we found for transatlantic business class flights. This started out with a flight from JFK to Vienna via Frankfurt in Condor business class, but when we then found a flight from JFK to Frankfurt on Singapore Airlines, we booked that instead and changed our JFK-FRA-VIE flight to be our return leg, still with Condor.

It’s been 12 years Since I was last in Vienna and I’m very excited to visit again! On top of that, I’m thrilled to fly Singapore Airlines in business class again and also to try Condor’s business class product, which I haven’t yet had the pleasure of flying. While we’re not so sure yet what we will do besides a few days in Vienna, we’re considering a road trip from either Munich or Milan. I’ll keep you posted…