MilesBuzz! - Newbie. Strategy to get miles for a rt trip to Italy (6/18-20)?

Newbie here, apologies in advance for the basic questions. I was a consultant before, but in Europe, so I am new to the game here in the US.

The situation is enviable and hard to manage at the same time:

- enviable because I only have a US-issued Amex SPG with excellent credit history/spending (2 years history now). So I would need at least a VISA card regardless of the bonus

- hard because I do need to get to Italy (VCE/MXP) for a quick trip Jun 18-Jun 20, and current fares are around $1300 (about double the standard fare).

So my goal is to get two rt tickets (me + lady) with bonus miles from JFK/EWR/PHL to MXP/VCE, obtained by applying to cards. Or at least to get enough miles to significantly lower the price. There is an evident time issue as this is 48 days away.

What is the best couse of action? Having read around, it seems I have two routes to play:

- CO OnePass for 50K in 12 days like experienced by aap. Any YQ/award limitation/blackout date that I should be aware of? CO has EWR-MXP flights.

- I am pretty sure I got the targeted Gold Amex 75k offer in the mail, which I stupidly threw away, so I am pinging amex to see if I can upgrade and get the deal. Any suggestions/disclaimer here? Once caveat is only I have the Amex SPG credit history, no this would not be doable for my wife.

- Any other possible route?

Thanks a lot for your answers.

do you see award availability for your trip?....how many mi/pt does it take?..

good luck...

Even if you were able to accumulate enough miles the odds of finding award seats is pretty low on short notice. Do lots of reading and start planning a 2012 trip. Planning is half the fun. :)

See if you can get the BA 100k mile Visa from Chase - both you and your wife. Check if BA has availability to MXP or VCE from your US city of departure. You can also try for the AA 75k miles card from Citi.

- hard because I do need to get to Italy (VCE/MXP) for a quick trip Jun 18-Jun 20, and current fares are around $1300 (about double the standard fare).
Where do you get the idea that this double the standard fare? What do you mean by "the standard fare"? I would think this is the standard fare for non-sale summer flights to Europe.

So my goal is to get two rt tickets (me + lady) with bonus miles from JFK/EWR/PHL to MXP/VCE, obtained by applying to cards. Or at least to get enough miles to significantly lower the price. There is an evident time issue as this is 48 days away.

Are you kidding"? First of all, every card you apply for is going to work something like this:

1. Apply for card.
2. Wiat for approval (may not be instant, and may take half a week at least).
3. Wiat for card in the mail (may take up to a week easily).
4. Use the card once (if it's something like CO 50k offer) or do the minimum spend (could be as high as $2500 IIRC with the current BA offer).
5. After that, wait for the next statement to close.
6. Wait a few more days for your miles to show uip.
7. Look for flights, and realize that there are no award flights at 50k miles per person any more, and you need another 50k miles now!

Ie, the only way you can be sure you'll have enough miles is if you get 100k-120k per person (coach) or 200k per person (business), which is enough for "anytime" awards.

Everyone wants to go to Europe in the summer, which is why both fares are higher in the summer and "saver" (capacity controlled) awards are few and far between.

If you were very flexible about your dates, that might be one thing. Butr you expect to get a "saver" award for specially Jun 18 out and Jun 20 return with just a few weeks (ie, by the time you actually have the miles in your account) to go before the trip?

And, btw, if you wait until then, the trip paid in money will cost even more!

... And all this effort for one night in Italy??? :confused: (Chances are the only award flights you will find, if any, will involve some connections overseas after an overnight TATL flight, so leaving on Sat 18th you won't get there until well into Sun 19th, and then have to fly back Mon 20th morning).

I think with most/all CCs you have to wait for your first statement to get the bonus miles. So that's a month.

With the Fidelity miles, they post the Thursday/Friday immediately after you hit the threshold - so you can get 50K miles much quicker that way if you have enough money to throw in an account.

But I would think that summer tickets to Italy on this short of notice are going to be really flipping hard to get.

double the standard fare?
lol it is the standard fare..

tons of fares ~$1250

try itasoftware.com


Round trip: JFK, EWR, PHL to MXP, VCE, Jun 18-20 Complete tripsIndividual flightsTime bars
PRICE 
AIRLINE 
DEPART 
ARRIVE 
DURATION 
FROM/TO 
STOPS 
ADVISORY 
$1,222
Alitalia
7:15pm
9:25am
Jun 19
8h 10m JFK to MXP --
10:45am
2:10pm
9h 25m MXP to JFK --
$1,222
Multiple Airlines
7:15pm
9:25am
Jun 19
8h 10m JFK to MXP --
10:45am
2:10pm
9h 25m MXP to JFK --
$1,222
Alitalia
7:15pm
9:25am
Jun 19
8h 10m JFK to MXP --
12:20pm
3:25pm
9h 5m MXP to JFK --
$1,222
Multiple Airlines
7:15pm
9:25am
Jun 19
8h 10m JFK to MXP --
12:20pm
3:25pm
9h 5m MXP to JFK --
$1,231


and more and more

alternatively you could fly to LAS, flights are <$500 right now.

so you save $1500 right there

Eat at Il Mulino ^

Sleep at Venetian or Palazzo..@:-)

Espresso at Illy. They even will let you sit at a table! No extra charge like Italy! ;)

No forex fee. :p

No expensive euros. :p

You may even win so much moniez that you could fly to Italia afterward with your winnings. :eek:

alternatively you could fly to LAS, flights are <$500 right now.

so you save $1500 right there

Eat at Il Mulino ^

Sleep at Venetian or Palazzo..@:-)

Espresso at Illy. They even will let you sit at a table! No extra charge like Italy! ;)

No forex fee. :p

No expensive euros. :p

You may even win so much moniez that you could fly to Italia afterward with your winnings. :eek:

Had to lol at this post. Partly because I have a trip planned to Vegas in June that I may be cancelling to do a European trip in July. Not quite same price, but July trip would be more of a vacation.

I do need to get to Italy (VCE/MXP) for a quick trip Jun 18-Jun 20, and current fares are around $1300 (about double the standard fare)...

As others have stated, $1,300 is actually a good fare on this route in early summer. Not "double the standard fare" at all.

There is an evident time issue as this is 48 days away. The "time issue" makes your quest virtually impossible for reasons stated above. By the time you get these cards approved and have the bonus miles posted (which often takes some prodding on your part) your departure date will be upon you. A lot of people start angling for these award seats, which are scarce, 330 days before departure.

What is the best couse of action? If you really need to be in Italy June 18-20, buy the tickets now. You're talking about CO OnePass awards... surprisingly, I do see good availability EWR-LHR-MXP-FRA/BRU-EWR on those dates for 55,000 miles, albeit on some unwieldy VS/LH partner awards with long layovers at Heathrow, but the odds of them still being there six weeks from now, when you may have miles, are very slim. It would be silly to spend a month or more hustling credit card bonuses to amass 110k miles only to discover, as you probably would, that all the SaverPass seats are gone and your itinerary now costs 100k miles per seat.

Welcome to Flyertalk, don't lose heart, but what you're seeking to pull off would be extremely difficult.

The "time issue" makes your quest virtually impossible for reasons stated above. By the time you get these cards approved and have the bonus miles posted (which often takes some prodding on your part) your departure date will be upon you. A lot of people start angling for these award seats, which are scarce, 330 days before departure.

If you really need to be in Italy June 18-20, buy the tickets now. You're talking about CO OnePass awards... surprisingly, I do see good availability EWR-LHR-MXP-FRA/BRU-EWR on those dates for 55,000 miles, albeit on some unwieldy VS/LH partner awards with long layovers at Heathrow, but the odds of them still being there six weeks from now, when you may have miles, are very slim. It would be silly to spend a month or more hustling credit card bonuses to amass 110k miles only to discover, as you probably would, that all the SaverPass seats are gone and your itinerary now costs 100k miles per seat.

Welcome to Flyertalk, don't lose heart, but what you're seeking to pull off would be extremely difficult.

+1 on all of the above - but I feel I need to emphasize that you should still go ahead and follow through with all of the suggestions above, although suspect that you won't. This type of scenario comes up on this board and in real life all the time and I know that many of us regularly send out information on getting these deals to friends and family only to have them ignore it and then be in your situation when they finally decide to go somewhere.

Follow through with all of the offers suggested above, buy your tickets this year, and then next year enjoy a wonderful, next to free trip (hopefully longer than 2 days).

Guys, he threw out a challenge.

With an AMEX SPG, you have the ability to add 4 authorized users (who must have ss#'s). Potentially you could generate a good amount of spend using 5 SPGs and tradecraft and convert the spend into any number of airline mile programs.

That said you might be able to hit Europe for about 70ish pp in miles. I am hitting Europe in peak (August) for that. Maybe accumulated SPG+spend+a big credit card signon bonus might hit Europe. At least in theory. Then you need a bridge flight to Italy from whatever European entry point you are able to get.

Looks like 60k AAdvantage total would carry Paradosso + wife from JFK to MXP on the evening of June 16th. Who can do better? On this seg or the return.

Newbie here, apologies in advance for the basic questions. I was a consultant before, but in Europe, so I am new to the game here in the US.

The situation is enviable and hard to manage at the same time:

- enviable because I only have a US-issued Amex SPG with excellent credit history/spending (2 years history now). So I would need at least a VISA card regardless of the bonus

- hard because I do need to get to Italy (VCE/MXP) for a quick trip Jun 18-Jun 20, and current fares are around $1300 (about double the standard fare).

So my goal is to get two rt tickets (me + lady) with bonus miles from JFK/EWR/PHL to MXP/VCE, obtained by applying to cards. Or at least to get enough miles to significantly lower the price. There is an evident time issue as this is 48 days away.

What is the best couse of action? Having read around, it seems I have two routes to play:

- CO OnePass for 50K in 12 days like experienced by aap. Any YQ/award limitation/blackout date that I should be aware of? CO has EWR-MXP flights.

- I am pretty sure I got the targeted Gold Amex 75k offer in the mail, which I stupidly threw away, so I am pinging amex to see if I can upgrade and get the deal. Any suggestions/disclaimer here? Once caveat is only I have the Amex SPG credit history, no this would not be doable for my wife.

- Any other possible route?

Thanks a lot for your answers.

He did throw out a challenge and he got an answer. No one sees any feasible way for him to get tickets in approx 1 month to Italy, which is always a difficult RT reward to get anyway.

And he hasn't been back to check this thread since his one post 40 hours ago, so I have my doubts about how urgent this is anyway. We get so many first-time posters asking very challenging questions or for specialized advice, sending FTers scurrying in all directions, but then never returning to see what happened.

Had a friend who just applied for a similar card. There is no way he gets the miles in time, and almost no chance of getting an award seat that late. Better to save for the next trip.

I knew a Paradosso from another website relating to MBA programs, nice guy who I lost track of a year or two ago, shot in the dark, but is this you? If so, send me a PM!

why not do 2 AA 75k cards and book a 120k award?

because then you would need 4 AA cards between him and his traveling partner, not to mention that he's probably looking to redeem the ff mileage for both people on the same flight which makes it more of an impossibility with a late booking.

Check if BA has availability to MXP or VCE from your US city of departure . For this June? Hah, hah, hah. That's a good one!

I would say you are SOL to get a trip via miles for June... Sorry man!

On Continental for the cheapest rewards to Europe it would be 55,000 miles round trip PER PERSON. Those won't be available for June though, so getting 2 tickets on Continental through miles is out.

All the other cards you don't get the miles until a minimum spend (BA 100k, AA 75k x 2, etc.), so you wouldn't get them in time.




Maybe you could bid on some flights on Priceline?
If you want to use miles for a summer flight at a good rate, or at ALL, you better book 6-12+ months out at LEAST.

If you have a lot of SPG points, US has a promo for 50% transfer bonus, another 25% if you get their credit card, and another 25% if you're US Elite. US is *A.

Another way to fly would be to generate a revenue ticket via a program like US Bank FlexPerks which would cut through the nonrevenue ticket capacity control issue at this late date?

If you have a lot of SPG points, US has a promo for 50% transfer bonus, another 25% if you get their credit card, and another 25% if you're US Elite. US is *A.

Because it looks like Paradosso is MIA, I'm going to try to hijack this thread for a novice question

I know you need to book at 330 days to have decent award availability, but the awards tend to open back up last minute to fill the plane.

I was wondering, is there a general time frame (14 days, 7 days, 1 day, etc) for when the airlines start opening up unfilled seats to award tickets?

i think the general strategy is that you have to call back every day and see what's available. i don't recall seeing a general schedule they use to release cheaper or ff seats but i could be wrong. i've changed a flight 2 months out to 2 days out on AA.

Another way to fly would be to generate a revenue ticket via a program like US Bank FlexPerks which would cut through the nonrevenue ticket capacity control issue at this late date? Even with the enrollment bonus, you'd have to spend half a year's pay in 30 days to achieve the points needed for the tickets the OP has in mind.

I Never could figure out what was 'enviable'

I was wondering, is there a general time frame (14 days, 7 days, 1 day, etc) for when the airlines start opening up unfilled seats to award tickets?
Besides the general answer that it depends on a complex algorithm of predicting loads (ie, it's a prediction what seats will be unfilled, not an actual count of what seats are currently unfilled, that determines award availability), it can vary by airline, by route, and by day of the week, among other things.

For example, I have seen awards (upgrade, in the case I was watching, but I wouldn't suprised if the same thing happened with outward awards) "sweep through" a day later each day. Ie, for a date several weeks in advance, Saturday awards were made available on a Sunday, Sunday awards on a Monday, Monday awards on a Tuesday, etc.

But on this particular route (AA's brand new JFK-BUD & BUD-JFK), some days of the week (Tue/Wed/Thu/Sat) were much more likely to get awards to show up at all during this "sweep-through" than other days (Fri/Sun/Mon).

The upgrade awards on many of those flights didn't show up again after that until the flight went to airport control (more or less), by which it would have been too late for an outright award (upgade awards are applied to already-booked tickets, which is why they can be done at the gate, but obviously outright awards need to be booked a bit more than 30 minutes in advance!)

Assuming outright awards followed the same pattern, you'd either need to be watching many different days to spot the "sweep-through pattern", or need to be checking every single day, or need to get a subscription to ExpertFlyer (www.expertflyer.com) and set up email notificaitons of when award inventory shows up on flights you're interested in.

(This being a brand-new route, there were intially some awards just "sitting there" for a while after the route had begun being sold. But they vanished the same day that they started a fare sale on this route, and never came back that I saw except for this one "sweep-through" pattern a few weeks before.

But I was flying on a connection from LAX, and the pattern of awards for the JFK-LAX leg was completely different (and much harder to figure out).

So all these really are are examples of how it can work. But they're enough to show that there's no simple formula like 7 days out or 14 days or 21 days out 3 months out.

Besides the general answer that it depends on a complex algorithm of predicting loads (ie, it's a prediction what seats will be unfilled, not an actual count of what seats are currently unfilled, that determines award availability), it can vary by airline, by route, and by day of the week, among other things.

For example, I have seen awards (upgrade, in the case I was watching, but I wouldn't suprised if the same thing happened with outward awards) "sweep through" a day later each day. Ie, for a date several weeks in advance, Saturday awards were made available on a Sunday, Sunday awards on a Monday, Monday awards on a Tuesday, etc.

But on this particular route (AA's brand new JFK-BUD & BUD-JFK), some days of the week (Tue/Wed/Thu/Sat) were much more likely to get awards to show up at all during this "sweep-through" than other days (Fri/Sun/Mon).

The upgrade awards on many of those flights didn't show up again after that until the flight went to airport control (more or less), by which it would have been too late for an outright award (upgade awards are applied to already-booked tickets, which is why they can be done at the gate, but obviously outright awards need to be booked a bit more than 30 minutes in advance!)

Assuming outright awards followed the same pattern, you'd either need to be watching many different days to spot the "sweep-through pattern", or need to be checking every single day, or need to get a subscription to ExpertFlyer (www.expertflyer.com) and set up email notificaitons of when award inventory shows up on flights you're interested in.

(This being a brand-new route, there were intially some awards just "sitting there" for a while after the route had begun being sold. But they vanished the same day that they started a fare sale on this route, and never came back that I saw except for this one "sweep-through" pattern a few weeks before.

But I was flying on a connection from LAX, and the pattern of awards for the JFK-LAX leg was completely different (and much harder to figure out).

So all these really are are examples of how it can work. But they're enough to show that there's no simple formula like 7 days out or 14 days or 21 days out 3 months out.

Thanks for the detailed answer. That was exactly what I have been wondering.

Is it realistic to be able to book an 2 award tickets for September at this point (from SEA to ROM)? Am I also way to late to the game to be able to do that now? Is there any way to get 1st/business class?

I recently applied for 2 British Airways cards (1 for each of us) and should complete the spend in the next week or so. Other than that, we have nearly 100,000 Delta miles each.

I've poked around the BA site but I haven't been able to find any availability on partner awards.