I know it's quite early to talk about next summer holidays, but since my wife and I are planning to go to Greece in July 2004 (one month before the Olympics) I would like to run some scenarios and questions by you.

I consider myself average Joe as far as knowing my way around airlines rules and ticketing. However, I must say that sometimes I'm puzzled by the complexity and even on some occasions the contradiction of what you can read on a document or a web site.

We would like to travel to ATH from the East Coast. I'm Premex and I have 80 000 points I would like to use for a Business class ticket and pay for the other one. When I looked at the Saver Award section of United website here's what you can read :

"More important facts about awards

* Award travel must be on a United or partner flight routing exclusively between valid cities or continents described in the United and partner awards charts, with no connections or stopovers on additional continents (or cities, where appropriate).

* One stopover en route to your final destination or one open jaw is permitted for a flight award on United between the continental U.S. and Hawaii or between the U.S. and the Caribbean, Asia, Australia, Central and South America or Europe. No stopovers are permitted within a geographic region. "

Obviously English is my second language, however, these two paragraphs are a bit confusing, one says that I can't do stopovers and the next one does allow me to do it!

Now if I want to do the following route, am I allowed to do it on a Saver Award?

BTV-IAD-FRA-ATH

If I can't do it with UA Saver Award, I guess I could then do it with the Star Alliance award chart ?

www.united.com/ual/asset/MP_Star_Awards.pdf

I guess I'm confused about which way to take to achieve my goal and before making any move, I think your advices could be of some help!