I’m Definitely Going to Oktoberfest, How I’m getting back to Chicago is the Question

From September 29th to October 3rd, I’ll be Munich Germany for Oktoberfest. This will be my second year in a row of attending. Let me start off by saying I love Germany, the people, atmosphere are amazing and I’ll looking forward to going back.

I’m planning on flying from Chicago to JFK via JetBlue then taking a Singapore Airlines flight to Frankfurt in Business Class and then the train to Munich (for those who don’t know know me this may seem like a lot). I’ll be staying at the Hilton Munich City (booked with the Citi Prestige Fourth Night free, more on this in a future post).

The question becomes how do I get back to Chicago.

The simplest solution would be just to return the way I came on Singapore Airlines but there might be a little problem with this and that is the impending E.U. laptop band. The laptop band poses two challenges for me, the first being I don’t want my laptop out of my possession and the second being I only intend to have a carryon and not check luggage. If I fly back the way I came, I would be forced to check a bag.

One Simple Solution, One not so Simple Solution

I’ve come up with two solutions. The most obvious solution would be to fly back to Chicago via Canada. This would involve flying via Icelandair, TAP Portugal or LOT. I’m flying to Europe in Business class and I would like to fly back in Business or First Class. None the three have a compelling business class product or reasonable saver awards for my travel dates. Icelandair has recliner seats, TAP has the terrible angled lie flat seats and LOT was 2-2-2 seats. 2-2-2 seating on LOT would seem like a reasonable choice but I flew the same seats to Addis Ababa and didn’t sleep very well on the 14 hour flight.

That brings me to my second solution, flying back to Chicago via Singapore and San Francisco on Singapore Airlines. This would involve me flying from Frankfurt to Singapore then to San Francisco on Singapore Airlines then San Francisco to Chicago on Virgin Airlines. The Business class on Singapore Airlines is excellent, probably one of the best in world. The awards availability is pretty good and I have a bunch of points I can use.

This seems like a lot of travel over a short period of time but I’ll have a 24 – 40 hour stopover in Singapore and I’ll look forward to exploring Singapore. Unless a better option comes along, I think this would probably be my best option.

How do you think I should fly back from Oktoberfest?