vmsea

Thinking of going to Paris, Copenhagen, Norway (in and around, maybe arctic circle), Finland.

Starting the trip from Seattle. What's the best award ticket to get?
Also best to Stop over in Paris/Copenhagen, and train it around scandi? flying may be inefficient cost wise?

Thoughts?

AlohaDaveKennedy

Back before Iceland's volcano blew I flew Easyjet up there. Check Easyjet options into the region.

vmsea

I'm not sure easyjet goes from Seattle to Europe?
Also I should clarify I'm looking for an award ticket..

Adam1222

Whatever has availability on the dates you're going? If you're using miles, you can likely get a free stopover in france en route to Scandinavia. Without knowing what miles you have, its impossible to advise you.

chrisljo

Then you most likely need Star Alliance miles, united perhaps, for the Scandi segments.

However, you should expect to add some paid segments to your trip as it would probably not be cost efficient to try to do everything on awards.

SEA-EWR-OSL-TOS to start and then paid tickets around Norway/Finland/Denmark and to
PAR and then back.

vmsea

I have miles with all 3 major alliances, and MR/UR to transfer is needed. Also no fixed dates yet so can't really check availability but yes of course whatever has no availability probably doesn't work

sdsearch

Finnair is in oneworld, so if you're going to or around Finland by air then OW is the alliance. But Finnair/OW has poor coverage of Scandinavia "proper" (some defintiions of Scandinavia don't include Finland, though some others do) outside the capitals. So you need to decide if you're flying only to the capitals or beyond. If you want to fly to town in Norway beyond Oslo, then *A is best because it includes SAS (Scandinavian). ST is second best because KLM serves some cities in Western Norway from AMS.

Norway is very tall (as is Finalnd). Going from the south to the north by train, if you can do it, is going to take very long (days?). It already takes 8ish hours to take a train from OSL to Bergen on the west coast, and that's a trival length journey compared to going far north toward the arctic circle.

And remember, if you fly straight from the US to Western/Northern Norway, it takes no more miles than flying form the US just to Copenhagen. But it takes signficantly more miles if you fly from the the US just to Copenhagen, then sidetrip there to Western/Northern Norway as a separate trip.

So you have weight cost vs time.

It's actually way more practical (timewise) to take a train betwewen Paris and Copenagen than a train from OSL to (near) the arctic circle, I would think.

How long is this trip, and just how separate far-flung places do you plan to see on it?

(I'm not familiar with the current stopover polcies on award trips from *A or ST. Those are rules with the airline you book the award flight through, anyway, not the alliance overall. In OW, I'm only familiar with the AA stopover policies, which changed about a year or two ago to only allowed at your North American gateway city, not overseas. Of course, those are official stopovers, sometimes you can "trick" an unofficial stopover of 23 hours or less just by playing with the schedule.)

Adam1222

Any alliance can get you to france with one stop, either in the Us/canada or in London (BA)or Amsterdam (DL).
Any alliance can get you from Scandinavia back to Seattle with one stop, though it might be hard to find flights with that option.
And any alliance has nonstops between between Paris and Scandinavia- air france: cph, osl, got, arn, billund. Sas- cph, osl, sta, arn, and hel. Oneworld is most limited - only Finnair to Helsinki.


But availability is the issue here. If Delta has low award availability, it could be the best- particularly if SEA-AMS is available as i like a longer overnight flight. If it doesn't, then using AA miles might if you can get BA SEA-LHR. Id also look at flying down toCalifornia and from there to Paris. But who knows. You need to poke around and narrow dates and locations, come up with specific routings, and ask again.

BA flights will have fuel surcharges, so I'd skip burning AA miles unless you go through JFK- plus throw in the limit on stopovers mentioned above.

Delta and United will both allow a stopover in Paris en route to one Scandinavian city, and a return from a different Scandinavian city (or vice versa)

vmsea

So a Seattle - AMS-CDG (stop over here) - to either Denmark/Finland/Norway.

Then return Denmark/finland/norway back to AMS-Seattle is possible?

open jaw, stop over? wow.. dream..

Adam1222

Correct.
As an example, I'm doing the following on a delta ticket:
Ewr-cdg-vie( Stop)-hel, tll-svo-jfk
On United you could do something like:
Sea-ewr-cdg (stop)-cph, arn-ord-sea

vmsea

This is considered a round trip ticket? or is each leg costing you xxx miles?

Adam1222

This is a roundtrip ticket. If booked at lowlevels or on partners, 50000 in coach, 100000 in business.

vmsea

I tried this on the online tool didn't seem to work.
do u have to call in for these kind of stop over + open jaw tickets?

THanks so much. wow 50K for that. amazing.

sdsearch

It depends a lot where in Scandinavia. Want to get back from Alesund or Bergen or Tromso (all Western Norway) to the USA? Forget completely about one-stop! And even with multiple stops, forget about alliances other than *A if it's Alesund or Tromso (Bergen you can add ST, but still not OW).

And like I said, it takes no more miles to go all the way to a city in Norway far beyond OSL than just to fly to OSL. And it takes no more miles to go all the way from a city in Norway far beyond OSL than just to fly from OSL.

So why the focus on one-stop? Its costs more in miles, because you're not getting to the furthest destination on the same amount of miles, if you're only focusing on one-stops.

The best use of miles would be to fly on miles to the most far-away destination, then use whatever means to get around to another far-away destination, then fly on miles from another most far-away destination. It takes a lot more (of either miles or money) to only fly to a major city (that a one-stop can take you to), and then purchase separate round trips to the far-away destinations you want to visit.

Adam1222

Yes, you will likely have to call. Using United miles you would not have to call, as it should price correctly on United.com.

To the poster arguing that I shouldn't focus on whether you can fly one-stop to Scandinavia, given no detail by the OP as to where he wants to go, I'll stand by it as relevant commentary. SAS, Finnair, and KLM all fly to many small cities in Scandinavia, but again, without detail as to the OP's specific destinations in mind, which one is best cannot be ascertained. My point was far more general.

I do agree that if there's an expensive-to-reach destination available on the OP's itinerary, he should add it as part of his main award ticket if possible. But there are a lot of cheap tickets available, cash or miles based, within Scandinavia, including smaller cities. Norwegian Air and Flybe have significant coverage between the two of them. There is a limit to how many stops you can get on an award ticket, and everyone's preferences on how to design an itinerary (connections v. nonstop flights, etc.) vary.