US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Award Seats- None for rest of year?!?

I just tried to burn some award miles to FCO. I have a trip scheduled for late May and want my wife to join me for a long weekend. I called the gold line and before I even mentioned dates, I was told that there are no more award seats for the rest of the year. Is this BS? Not a single seat on any date for the rest of the year? I was interested in an Envoy (80K) seat. There are apparently Premium Award seats(160K) available. Given the current situation, I'm anxious to burn miles; but I'm not that anxious.

This is common. Envoy award seats at the 80K level are scarcer than hen's teeth. Especially to FCO and especially outside of winter. Best bet is book 330 days in advance or burn 160K or buy a cheap revenue ticket and use miles to upgrade (30K each way).

@:-) Can you get her to Europe -- London, Paris, Germany, etc? If so and if she is a bit adventuresome, there are lots of cheap seats on to FCO.

I made Rome on May 6th of last year on Dl in Business Class using miles to upgrade. Seats were tight then and I booked over 9 months (but not 331 days) early.

Yes. You absolutely must book award tickets to Rome 330 days in advance. Your only hope is to check much much closer to the day of travel and try to go mid-week.

Also, why not just get a premium coach award and use your systemwides to upgrade at the time of booking!

As others have noticed, FCO is very popular and books out as soon as inventory is available.

I would suggest booking to LGW or CDG - plenty of lift to those two cities. We booked October 2001 Envoy seats in July 2001.

Also, why not just get a premium coach award and use your systemwides to upgrade at the time of booking!

As I found out a few weeks ago, inventory for upgrades from Y/B fares comes out of the same inventory as the 80K Envoy awards do. I purposely booked a B fare SEA-LGW last month and tried to upgrade at time of booking. No dice, I was waitlisted yet the upgrade cleared about 5-6 days before the outbound flight.

Depending on how you want to do it, your best option would probably be to get any award seat you can to Europe and a cheap LCC transfer to Rome. (Alternately, you could buy a paid ticket and upgrade or other options as detailed above.) I was looking up award travel to MAD for this summer and the restricted capacity seats were gone, all the way from May thorugh the end of August.

If she's really adventerous, you could fly in to the FRA/ZRH/VCE/MUC (some of these destinations are cheaper than others with the LH partnership -- RDU-ZRH was the cheapest Atlantic trip option for me a few weeks ago) area and take a train to FCO. I like the train system over there and usually fly into wherever I can get a good ticket then take trains around just to visit areas. She probably wouldn't want to do that without you, but using a EuroPass/EuRail ticket makes the rail travel really cheap compared to the rates charged over there, and it's a lot of fun for me to see all of the countryside going from one place to another.