Santorini's cliffside caldera views are worth every mile of the journey from Southern California, and there's no way around it: booking business class from San Diego to Santorini requires at least one, often two, connections, since no carrier flies this route nonstop. The most reliable routing pairs a transatlantic leg on British Airways or Lufthansa with a final hop on Aegean Airlines, which controls the lion's share of flights into Santorini's compact JTR airport. Total journey time runs close to 14 hours in the air alone, and I've found the smoothest itineraries route through London Heathrow on British Airways Club Suite, a fully enclosed suite with a door on the 777 and A350 fleets, or through Frankfurt or Munich on Lufthansa, where Allegris business is being phased in on select long-haul aircraft, though older reverse-herringbone seats still appear on many US routings.
Munich tends to be my preferred connection over Frankfurt for this itinerary — the transfer times between the transatlantic arrival and the Aegean or Lufthansa regional departure to JTR are more forgiving, and Munich's terminal layout involves far less walking than Frankfurt's sprawling concourses. Aegean itself doesn't operate a dedicated long-haul business cabin, but its short intra-European hop into Santorini is comfortable enough, and boarding early lets you grab window seats for that final approach over the Aegean Sea, which is a spectacle in itself. Santorini's airport gets overwhelmed in peak summer, so build in cushion time if you're arriving between June and August; the shoulder seasons avoid this entirely.
April, May, September, and October aren't just kinder to the crowds — they're consistently when I've seen the strongest business class award and revenue fares on this Athens-adjacent routing, since demand slackens right as the weather remains ideal for caldera sunsets. Because pricing on this three-leg journey fluctuates with both transatlantic and intra-European demand cycles, setting up fare alerts is the smartest way to catch the rare moments when premium seats align across all three carriers.
