Long time reader, not a frequent poster. I've been running fare checks for the last couple of days for a family trip to the UK in May/June timeframe. I know there are a lot of good deals to the UK right NOW, but my family can't travel there until May/June due to other conflicts.

From what I've seen so far, prices up until late May can be purchased in the $700 range. In late April and early May, I know it's even cheaper...but in early June, it goes up to the $1100 range.

What I'm thinking is that we can split up the travel plans so that one group can go in late May (@ the $700 range). Two won't be able to travel to the UK until early June, and I can't figured out what's the best way to handle those tickets. I don't travel to Europe a lot so I'm not sure if fares will go down. To redeem miles for a UK R/T trip, I would need 55k in miles. I have a UnitedMileage Plus Credit card, so I get some miles that way, but I'll still shy of miles to redeem for two tickets.

By the end of the month, I should have approximately 100k in United miles, which I was originally thinking about saving it up for a trip to Asia or Australia (which tends to be more expensive and would be a good use of miles). But since the fare to UK is more expensive than I expected, I wasn't sure if it's a good use of miles to redeem for it, or if it's worth it to keep the miles and save it for Asia or Australia.

Since I'm short roughly 10k miles to redeem for two tickets, (and I've checked out bonus offers and realistically, don't think I could get 10K in miles in about 3 months), I think my options are:

1) use 55,000 miles to redeem a ticket for one and pay for my ticket (so I'll earn miles as well), but it would be $1k in out of pocket expenses...(yikes). That way, though, at least I'll be earning approximately 6k in miles for my flight and could use that to save towards an Asia/Australia trip (versus earning no miles)

2) pay roughly $350 to buy miles to make up for whatever miles I'm missing to reach the 55k for the second ticket to redeem. Each redemption will cost me $100+ additional in taxes, but it's still cheaper than buying the ticket at full cost.

3) buy some unnecessary items (i.e. FTD bonus offers) to help earn miles faster and that redeem it that way?

What would you do? I don't know if prices to Europe will come down around that time, or if I should just wait and see and hope it comes down. From what I know, it's travel peak season so I'm not holding much hope.

Thanks in advance for any tips you can provide, as I like to have the best use of these miles that took me a couple of years (both in purchases and for flying to accrue).