jccmu

I'm looking to go to NYC to Spain roundtrip for me and my wife in September/October 2013 and can be flexible in my travel dates. Planning on going for a week/maybe a little bit more and am indifferent between flying into Madrid/Barcelona or any other major Spanish airport serviced by the NYC area. Would like to fly round trip business if possible but would do economy both ways if it was a much better deal. Also do not mind paying cash and then upgrading with points if there is a good deal to be had.

I have 100k ultimate rewards points, 50k membership rewards points, 70k united points, 25k delta points, and 125k starwood. I would be willing to do a credit card sign-up to get extra points.

I saw the avios conversion bonus at Amex but know that a lot of those redemption come with hefty fees. What airlines are my best bet to look at/best day of week for the tickets? Any tips/tricks you can recommend for this type of redemption?

Thank you so much for your help.

AirD0c

You can redeem BA Avios on Iberia to avoid fees. Haven't done it myself and doesn't seem very straightforward but apparently possible. See this TPG post:
http://thepointsguy.com/2012/11/maxi...airways-avios/

Otherwise I would probably use United points. You have enough for economy or you could transfer an additional 30k UR for biz. I think UA flies direct to Madrid from EWR. Or you could fly LH via Frankfurt or Munich; Tap via lisbon etc.

Spacetime17

Using Avios on Iberia instead of British Airways lowers the fees and also opens up a lot more redemption options, as seats are available to Iberia Plus members that aren't available to oneworld partners.

You can of course transfer your Membership Rewards points directly to Iberia, but you will miss out on any transfer bonus that you'll get by first transferring them to BA (though none are currently available to my knowledge).

Keep in mind that in order to convert BA Avios to Iberia Avios, your IberiaPlus account has to be open for 3 months AND have some activity (transferring in 1k MR points will work). Not a bad idea to open an Iberia acct just to get the clock going.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That said, I like AirD0c's idea of focusing on United. If you're flexible with dates you could get onto a direct to Madrid, and return home from Barcelona on partner airlines (connect them with a cheap Vueling flight). Booking this as a round trip will allow you to count NYC as a stopover on one side of the trip, thus adding a "free one-way" to really extract value from your miles.

Something like:
NYC - MAD (United or partners)
BCN - NYC (United or partners)
...
NYC - XXX (United)

This is a double open-jaw with a stopover for only 60k miles in Economy! You could of course take the stopover at the beginning of the trip instead.

Enjoy.

TheMilesProfessor

NYC to Madrid is only 3,600 miles each way. If you can find inventory on United, a good bet is to transfer Membership Rewards points to ANA. They dropped fuel surcharges on United and US Airways so their awards are a good deal for these simple routings. EWR-MAD roundtrip will cost 43,000 in Economy or 68,000 in Business class. You can then use UR points or transfer SPG to US Airways for the other ticket. Last year, US Airways ran a 50% bonus on points transferred from hotels so you could get 60,000 US Airways miles for 35,000 SPG points. Perhaps they will do this again this year...

You can find the ANA award chart here:

http://www.ana.co.jp/wws/us/e/asw_co...ikeiair_1.html