I very much agree with this. It is possible to have a plan in place that would allow your friend to do this trip in August 2012; it is equally (and perhaps more) possible that even if the miles/points are earned, availability may have dried up.

All is not lost, however. A good backup plan simply may be to move the dates of the trip into September or October or maybe even into the winter of 2012-13. My sister did this when she celebrated her 50th birthday by taking a trip to Dublin six months after the date.

If your friend is insistent that the trip must occur surrounding her birthday, then she may have to adjust her destination or look for especially good deals on flights. I'm assuming from your original message that your friend is paying for her partner's portion of the trip. Given that your friend's partner is also reluctant to apply for credit cards, this means that your friend is stuck with funding the trip with her own money and whatever credit card bonuses she can find.

Assume for the moment that your friend has to pay for everything without any credit card miles/points. Your friend would be lucky indeed to spend at or about $800/ticket for economy seats to Paris in August. On the other hand, I think it's realistic to find two tickets at that time of the year for around $1000/ticket, but your friend will have to keep an eye out for sales, perhaps be a little flexible in her travel dates (mid-week flights tend to be cheaper), and be ready to buy the tickets as soon as she sees a good bargain. By the way, offseason, tickets should be available for $700 each or less.

Since your friend is young enough, she might find that hostel or B&B accommodations in Paris are sufficient for her needs, which would reduce her lodging costs. Just as an example, as I have no personal knowledge of these accommodations, it appears that your friend might be able to get a double room with a bath on the hall in August for about $75/night: http://www.paris-hostel.biz/budget.html. Assuming a seven-night trip, she's just spent about $525 more.

Your friend would then have a remaining budget of about $500 for a seven-night trip for two people, which must include RT transportation from and to the airport, meals, sightseeing, and fun. She'd then need to do some research (duh, she's a librarian!) regarding inexpensive places to eat and free to inexpensive options for touring. Doable, but it sounds as if she'll really be seeing Paris on the cheap.

Now, let's see where we could free up some money to increase the amount of fun your friend and her partner might have. United miles will get your friend on a Lufthansa flight from Boston to Paris, with a connection in Frankfurt, for 60,000 miles and $131.60. She'd still have to earn the miles, but two Chase cards could do the trick: first, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...0k-points.html, which requires $3000 in spending in 3 months to qualify for 50K Ultimate Rewards points that are transferable to United on a 1:1 basis.

Then she should get either a Chase Continental or United card. Not a spectacular earnings bonus: 25K on first use, 5K for an adding another user who makes a purchase within two months. Another 10K is available for $25K spending, but I'm going to assume your friend can't afford that on a librarian's salary. Nevertheless, she should be able to earn 75K United miles from this card and the conversion of UR points from the Chase Sapphire Preferred, enough for one person to fly in economy on an award ticket. Assuming a trip in August, that saves about $800 right there.

The big deal here is that seats available by award redemption and available seats for purchase with cash may not be equivalent; in other words, there's no guarantee that your friend will be able to buy one ticket and then use her miles to get an award ticket on the same flight. In general, award availability is less than seats available for purchase so your friend and her partner have to be open to the possibility that one might fly over on one flight several hours earlier than the other. Great if they can get seats together on the same plane, but they need to know that to make the trip possible, they may need to accept the inconvenience of flying one or both ways separately. This issue tends to disappear when you try to book in the offseason.

Accommodations? I'll throw a curve ball here: Choice Visa. The deadline for the current offer is November 30. No annual fee. 24K points with first purchase, 16K additional if she uses the card to pay for a Choice hotel stay. I understand Choice isn't the snazziest hotel chain; on the other hand, Choice has some excellent values in Europe, with some hotels in Paris going for as low as 8000 points a night. Even if the hotels go for 20K per night, she's saved herself another $150 for a very minimal investment. One big caveat with the Choice program, however: assuming no other status with Choice than the Gold conferred with taking the credit card, award bookings cannot be made more than 50 days in advance.

If they're willing to move the trip off those August dates into the offseason, the redemption picture improves for airlines and hotels, and as a bonus, the number of points/miles needed to redeem for an award drops as well. In that case, I'd suggest the Citi/AA cards (apply for two at one time, 50K bonus each, see here). Off-peak awards to Europe on AA go for as little as 40K RT so two cards would be more than enough to get to Paris, especially because AA generously defines "off-peak" as October 15 to May 15. I just did a trial booking for 2/15/12 through 2/22/12--80K miles and $185.40 for two people with plenty of flights and seats available.

I agree that it would be helpful to have your friend post here directly as we would probably be able to get a fuller picture of her wishes; however, I suspect that you're going to be doing the heavy lifting on this one so you have a lot of research to do. The more patience and flexibility she brings to this enterprise, the better off you are.

Good luck!