US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-2005 America West merger) - Award Miles to Italy

I am planning on booking 2 award tickets to Italy for next spring. My question is, Since I am CP, can I book a 50,000 mile coach award and get a CP upgrade to Envoy, or do I need to book it as an 80,000 mile Envoy Class?

No upgrades given on award tickets to Europe.

You'll have to spend the 80,000 points.

you may also want to look at using your *A miles and go on LH. see you are in NC (but don't know which city). we went back in may on LH from CLT, connected in MUC (much better than connecting in PHL), and were able to pick from many more cities than just FCO and VCE (we went into NAP and out through VRN) 80,000 each for the new LH biz seats. plus the wireless internet let me catch up on all my business email over the atlantic (for only $30)

I agree with the Star Alliance thoughts as another award option. It was important to us to go Business Class on the trip. At the time of booking, nothing was available from home airports.

We ended up booking Austrian JFK-VIE-FCO for the way over. Originally, all we could get coming back was SAS through CPH into EWR. That was fine, but we were lucky enough to be able to switch to a US Airways nonstop to PHL, much closer to home, from FCO for the return.

Austrian Business Class was wonderful.