American Express Membership Rewards - Best MR usage to Eurpoe

First of all, let me apologize if I am putting this in the wrong place or if I am violating any FT rules. It is my first “posting” of a question and this seems to be the best place.

I have approx 1.05 million MR points and want to take a great trip this summer to either England/Ireland or Italy (guess my wife’s and my family background…) I am probably the stereotypical American where my wife and I would like to take a trip during summer school break so my sister-in-laws and/or grandparents could cover the babysitting for two small children. My general rules are:

Travel for 10-14 days in either Italy or Ireland/England from Mid/Late June to late August.
The best use of my MR points. (I tend to like the “finer things in life” but cringe at having to pay double what I would have if I would have just done things earlier).
At least “Business Class” air travel.
Good accommodations for hotels. (We are more “daring” for England/Ireland where we can speak English, but more apprehensive in Italy where we have to work thru the language thing.
Any help on places to go (but I am already looking thru the other FT areas and should be able to get a good list of things to do from them).

My problems… in general…and their related questions are:

Getting business or first class mileage tix from airlines that are directly related to MR for this summer, even late summer. (FYI, we live in southern California so we would likely be flying our of LAX if that matters)

I have read and reread the posts on FT and it looks like if you don’t do this within the “331 day” window, I might be out of luck. We are VERY flexible on the summer dates, and if we have to wait until next year, we will. Any suggestions? Just seems like you spend all this time accumulating miles only to have the airlines tell you that “You can’t get there for that, but if you pay double miles, we have a seat for you.” Maybe that is the reality of things, but avoiding things like that are one of the main purposes of FT isn’t it? Also, I am not worried about exchanging miles into multiple accounts if I can get them to the airline that best honors them. If everyone thinks that I should wait until next year, I will.

Second question… When is the best time to go? My wife and I have only taken one trip to Europe (Paris and Champagne in July) and it was blistering hot. Still… it was one of the top two or three trips we have ever taken. Is early June, or late August better for our next trip?

Last question… Is there a better way to take a trip to Europe with miles? My “working theory” has been that we should be able to go to Europe (at least business class) for 200k miles (100k per person) and that we should be able to get at least 10 room nights for 50k miles per night. That would mean that we should be able to have one heck of a vacation for 700k miles! I would love it if someone on FT could tell me how to do this twice for the same “price”, or at least tell me where I could save. (remember, the big problem is going when the kids are out of school.)

Thank you all, in advance, for any help you can give, including websites, books, or other places that I should be looking!!!!

Don't get hung up about the 331 days. For British Airways, you can get 2 fully flat-bed Club World (business) seats / beds from LAX to LHR on 9 days in June, 15 days in July and 14 days in August. Coming back you can choose from 14 days in June, 2 (?!) days in July and a whopping 16 days in August.

BA with MR points is complex. You need to move them into Priority Club or SPG and then into BA. Two CW seats will cost you 320,000 MR points - this translates to 160,000 SPG which gets you 200,000 BA Miles. It will probably cost you fewer miles for a business class seat on another airline but it will probably not be a fully-flat (ie horizontal) bed. Note that BA will let you book your reward ticket through to Italy via London, with stopovers in London, for the same 200,000 miles so you won't need to pay for tickets inside Europe.

Air New Zealand is worth a look, tho' not sure how you get this through MR - you may need to transfer to another Star Alliance carrier. They do LAX to LHR with a very well regarded business class product.

Weather - UK is fine in August. Italy may be too hot - I wouldn't go there in August.

Hotels - obviously depends where you are going. SPG may not be a bad way to get free nights in good quality hotels, especially in Italy (Florence, Rome, Venice) and London (although not the rest of the UK where Starwood has no properties). The UK has the poorest hotels in Europe when you get outside London, and I would struggle to name more than 10 world-class hotels in the rest of the country. There are lots of Hiltons, Marriott, Holiday Inns and Holiday Inn Express properties you could redeem at, but they are generally very poor - look at tripadvisor.com reviews if you want proof. The best properties are independently run or part of small chains (Hotel du Vin and Malmaison are the 'poshest' mini-chains) and neither of these are redeemable using any sort of mileage. If you want to use your MR points to stay in luxury then I would look at the Italian SPG properties.

Air New Zealand is worth a look, tho' not sure how you get this through MR - you may need to transfer to another Star Alliance carrier. They do LAX to LHR with a very well regarded business class product.



For Air Newzealand, you can transfer points to Aeroplan directly and then get the tickets through them. But before you do the transfer, call and make sure there is availability. Also link up your airline accounts to MR now...sometimes it can take 2-5 days to link which is annoying since availability could potentially disappear within that time.

Also, my advice is to not buy tickets (or even hotels) directly through MR. They charge a premium (points) compared to the hotel chains and airlines. Its better to transfer and then buy the ticket. If you want to stay at Starwood properties, there is a upcoming bonus for a 2MR:1SPG transfer (as opposed to the 3:1 norm) -- starting Jan 1, 2006. Look into that.

For started to get a free Air New Zealand ticket with MR points is very easy without taking the hit from Starwood conversion. I do it all the time. Transfer miles into ANA Mileage Club as they are a Star Allanice member Just make sure you call ANA Mileage Club first and make sure there is avalibilty on Air New Zealand before you transfer miles over to ANA Mileage Club as once you do you cant get the miles back. ANA Mileage Club will let you reserve a member reward ticket for upto 30 days even if you dont have enough miles in your account. Just tell them you plan to transfer the miles in from American Express Membership Rewards.

If you are already going to go on Air New Zealand I would recommend you use 125K miles over 80K because 125K=first class ticket while 80K= bussiness class ticket. So you will get more bang for your buck on a first class ticket and the seats and are much much nicer. Also Beaware you can also take United if you want to Londen there non stop from LAX as they have 2 flights a day and there fist clas is only 100K points and later of there flights from LAX is on new 777's so there first class is super nice. They early day flight they seem to rotate tho with a 747 and DC-10 both are much older planes and not as nice. Still think Air New Zealand is slightly nicer even tho they only use 747 but United is not that bad either.

As far as using points for hotel while I understand you have thoses miles hotels really dont give you best bang for your buck compared to First Class ticket. 99% of the time the nicer hotels in Europe are not Starwood, Hilton or even Priority Club members but members of Inter-Continental or Sofitel or Fine Hotels and Resort member hotels.

So you might just first found out what hotel you want to stay at then look to see if the miles you have can be redem at that property.

I just set up a similar trip about a month ago: 320,000 MR points to Virgin Atlantic for four UCS ("Upper Class") tickets for my family, SFO-LHR in August (21-day trip). It was difficult to find four UCS tickets SFO-LHR, as there's only one flight from SFO-LHR daily. I'm not sure what the situation is for LAX. If you only need two tickets, you probably would have an easier time with availability.

If you can get to JFK or EWR, VS seems to run a lot of flights from there to London. When I checked last month, there seemed to be a lot of award inventory for JFK-LHR.

Personally, I would go with Virgin to Europe in Upper Class. Transferring Amex points to Virgin is 1:1 and there's no transferring tax to Virgin. The UC seat on Virgin is 80K miles versus 100K miles for other domestic airlines and you'll have to pay transferring tax from MR to domestic airlines.

From what I understand UC tickets out of LAX has better availability than from SFO or LAS.

http://www.v-flyer.com has a lot of good info on VS.

Personally, I would go with Virgin to Europe in Upper Class. Transferring Amex points to Virgin is 1:1 and there's no transferring tax to Virgin. The UC seat on Virgin is 80K miles versus 100K miles for other domestic airlines and you'll have to pay transferring tax from MR to domestic airlines.

From what I understand UC tickets out of LAX has better availability than from SFO or LAS.

http://www.v-flyer.com has a lot of good info on VS.

I took Virgin Atlantic 1X and I will never take them again. They have 3 flights a day from Los Angeles so getting a ticket is not hard. Except they seats suck unless you get on one early flight which is a 747 flight i took outbound and I came back on a DC-10 flight. 747 seats are ok then dont turn into a full bed but they are not bad. On DC-10 tho they only recline like 2/3 and they are smaller and they dont have full almost bed size seats but older style seats that really only 2 parts.

I think United first class on 777 blow them out of the water hands down and they are only 100K points vs 80K.

I took Virgin Atlantic 1X and I will never take them again. They have 3 flights a day from Los Angeles so getting a ticket is not hard. Except they seats suck unless you get on one early flight which is a 747 flight i took outbound and I came back on a DC-10 flight. 747 seats are ok then dont turn into a full bed but they are not bad. On DC-10 tho they only recline like 2/3 and they are smaller and they dont have full almost bed size seats but older style seats that really only 2 parts.

I think United first class on 777 blow them out of the water hands down and they are only 100K points vs 80K.

Is your opinion above ("United first class on 777 blows them out of the water hands down") based mainly on the DC-10 experience? Or would it be the same even if you had the new 747 UCS seats both outbound and inbound?

Is your opinion above ("United first class on 777 blows them out of the water hands down") based mainly on the DC-10 experience? Or would it be the same even if you had the new 747 UCS seats both outbound and inbound?


My outbound flight was on 747 and i still think United FC on 777 is much much better. I think VA UC on 747 is better than United BC. If you get stuck on VA DC-10 then I think United BC is about the same as VA UC. Not really much better to be honest.

Now if I would have known that VA had such a huge differnce between there planes I would have picked the 747 flight both ways because 747 seats honestly where not that bad. They are like older FC seats on DC-10 and 747. I normally only go FC and only reason I went on VA was because I could not get a ticket on United, Air New Zealand or Air France in FC and I had a couple of friends tell me VA was not bad. Ofcoarse after my experiance thoses same friends told they went on 747 both ways and they did not know that DC-10 seats suck.

I complained afterwards in writing to VA about how much of a differnce and how bad there seats are on DC-10 compared to there 747 and VA credited my account 80K points. The person at office of the president I spoke too was well aware of the difference.

My outbound flight was on 747 and i still think United FC on 777 is much much better. I think VA UC on 747 is better than United BC. If you get stuck on VA DC-10 then I think United BC is about the same as VA UC. Not really much better to be honest.

Thanks for the information. That seems to be in line with how Virgin Atlantic describes (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/whatsonboard/upperclass/seatandbed/index.jsp) the new UCS seats. All the competitive comparisons are against business class, not first class. So VS appears to regard UC as a business class product.

I do have one question about the UCS seat. VS describes it as a fully flat bed, but you earlier noted that your 747 seat didn't turn into a full bed. Was the seat fully flat?

Thanks for the information. That seems to be in line with how Virgin Atlantic describes (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/whatsonboard/upperclass/seatandbed/index.jsp) the new UCS seats. All the competitive comparisons are against business class, not first class. So VS appears to regard UC as a business class product.

I do have one question about the UCS seat. VS describes it as a fully flat bed, but you earlier noted that your 747 seat didn't turn into a full bed. Was the seat fully flat?

On the 747 flight yes they turn fully flat except I am 6'3" so the bed is not long enough for me and they are fully enclosed. I looked at the link you provided they claim they are 82" long which is just not true. Maybe if you measure from from the top of the head rest area to the top boarder where you feet are it is 82 inches.

On the 777 planes or even Air New Zealand 747 plane they are using the new style seats that are much wider and longer are not full enclosed either but have a privacy section around your so called area. So you dont fell like you shoved into a sardine can.

And the seats on there DC-10 are "OTHER UPPER CLASS CABINS" which you can tell from the pics really do suck and are nothing more than a normal BC seats. Problem with VA is they offer 3 flights a day from LAX and only one uses 747 with the newer seats other 2 flights still use the older seats.

Looking at there web page they have 4 flights into JFK a day only 1 uses 747. They have 2 flights a day to EWR none use 747. So getting these new seats on VA is not easy as they dont service all routes with 747 but mostly with older DC-10 and thoses planes still have old seats on them. SFC only serviced by DC-10 so is Las Vegas so you cant get the new seats from thoses cities.

I am willing to bet as more and more people notice the seats on 747 are much better than DC-10 thoses seats will become much harder to get with mileage as VA must also know paying customers are going to demand thoses seats.

Looking at there web page they have 4 flights into JFK a day only 1 uses 747. They have 2 flights a day to EWR none use 747. So getting these new seats on VA is not easy as they dont service all routes with 747 but mostly with older DC-10 and thoses planes still have old seats on them. SFC only serviced by DC-10 so is Las Vegas so you cant get the new seats from thoses cities.

I am willing to bet as more and more people notice the seats on 747 are much better than DC-10 thoses seats will become much harder to get with mileage as VA must also know paying customers are going to demand thoses seats.

Thanks again for the detailed information. It helps to set expectations for my upcoming trip. Hopefully this discussion also helps the OP.

Regarding SFC -- do you mean SFO? My understanding is that all of the flights from SFO (as well as from JFK, Newark, and Las Vegas from December 1) have the new UCS seats ("suites"). VS has a page (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/whatsonboard/upperclass/rollout/index.jsp) describing the rollout plans. When I made my award reservations, the VS agent confirmed my seat assignments in the new 747 seating configuration.

V-flyer has a number of resources that could help determine which flights will have the new UC suites: history (http://www.v-flyer.com/chance.asp?click=9) of planes by route, aircraft database (http://www.v-flyer.com/aircraft.asp?click=7), and seat ratings (http://www.v-flyer.com/seats.asp?click=36). It looks like the new UCS seats are being rolled out over the A340 aircraft as well as the 747.

Thanks again for the detailed information. It helps to set expectations for my upcoming trip. Hopefully this discussion also helps the OP.

Regarding SFC -- do you mean SFO? My understanding is that all of the flights from SFO (as well as from JFK, Newark, and Las Vegas from December 1) have the new UCS seats ("suites"). VS has a page (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/whatsonboard/upperclass/rollout/index.jsp) describing the rollout plans. When I made my award reservations, the VS agent confirmed my seat assignments in the new 747 seating configuration.

V-flyer has a number of resources that could help determine which flights will have the new UC suites: history (http://www.v-flyer.com/chance.asp?click=9) of planes by route, aircraft database (http://www.v-flyer.com/aircraft.asp?click=7), and seat ratings (http://www.v-flyer.com/seats.asp?click=36). It looks like the new UCS seats are being rolled out over the A340 aircraft as well as the 747.

My mistake they are A340 not DC-10. From the press release you are correct I guess they updated some of there older planes with the new seats as well now. Just find it funny how they dont offer new seats from Los Angeles except on selected flights which is an 11 hour flight but they do for places like JFK, Newark, Boston and Washington which are only 5-6 hour flights.

But notice the "*For operational reasons we cannot guarantee that aircraft will not change without prior notice. Some aircraft will not be fitted with the Upper Class Suite"

So I assume they barely have enough planes with the new suites is problem and if any plane has problems then it a roll of the dice.

There is so much misinformation ( = mistakes, and not just grammatical) in this thread.

VA is the abbreviation for Volare Airlines in Italy, I believe. I don't think they fly DC-10s. Virgin Atlantic's code is VS. They don't fly DC-10s either. They fly 747s and A-340s - and V-Flyer even identifies an A-380.

I have been on more than one VS flight :p (JNB, JFK, LAX, SFO, MCO, MIA and coming up CPT) and have found VS close to or at the top in terms of space in business class. Expounding theories on the basis of just one flight which may or may not have been on a DC-10 means the theories are not based on much experience. Every airline has the odd poor flight.

VS does not have a first class. Their business class (Upper Class) is superior to most airlines' business class, especially their main competition BA.

Upper Class Suites - the latest UC accommodation - is superior to most airlines' first class, with more room across the shoulders and more length than most.

There are some airlines which are aguably better than VS in business class - SQ, CX and EK come to mind. On just about any measurable level, VS business class is superior to US airlines' business class, and probably better than most US airlines' first class.

To compare UA F with VS J is like comparing chalk and cheese. They are different. We all have our own opinions. I find VS suites remarkable.

There is so much misinformation ( = mistakes, and not just grammatical) in this thread.

VA is the abbreviation for Volare Airlines in Italy, I believe. I don't think they fly DC-10s. Virgin Atlantic's code is VS. They don't fly DC-10s either. They fly 747s and A-340s - and V-Flyer even identifies an A-380.

I have been on more than one VS flight :p (JNB, JFK, LAX, SFO, MCO, MIA and coming up CPT) and have found VS close to or at the top in terms of space in business class. Expounding theories on the basis of just one flight which may or may not have been on a DC-10 means the theories are not based on much experience. Every airline has the odd poor flight.

VS does not have a first class. Their business class (Upper Class) is superior to most airlines' business class, especially their main competition BA.

Upper Class Suites - the latest UC accommodation - is superior to most airlines' first class, with more room across the shoulders and more length than most.

There are some airlines which are aguably better than VS in business class - SQ, CX and EK come to mind. On just about any measurable level, VS business class is superior to US airlines' business class, and probably better than most US airlines' first class.

To compare UA F with VS J is like comparing chalk and cheese. They are different. We all have our own opinions. I find VS suites remarkable.

I dont work for the airlines so excuss my mistake that VA= Virgin Atlantic. And I DO NOT take 100 flights year. I take 2-3 trips to europe a year and maybe 2 domestic trips a year also.

All i was trying to point out is if you get one of there new seats it much better than there older seats. Even there new seats are not comparable to new F class seats that both United and American use on there new 777 planes but closer to the older style F class seats.

dolmar

I took Virgin Atlantic 1X and I will never take them again.
I complained afterwards in writing to VA about how much of a differnce and how bad there seats are on DC-10 compared to there 747 and VA credited my account 80K points.

If you don't use your 80K VS miles, I would love to trade them with you. ;)