Originally Posted by
crimson12
Hi All,
I'd posted earlier in the AA forum about taking a RTW trip using their distance based award chart (such a good value!), but with a toddler, and the difficulty of pulling together that much vacation time, it probably won't happen. So here is my new question.
1. We'd like to go to South America. We have family in Bolivia, a few hours outside of La Paz, but that may not be the best place to cart around a 1-2 yr old. So we are thinking of visiting somewhere else in South America (Santiago and Buenos Aires are top choices) and having our family meet us there. We could possibly do two cities but probably not more than that. I also know that Northern South America is cheaper than Southern South America, so that is a consideration (e.g., maybe fly to Lima on miles and buy a ticket to a point south).
2. We'd like to go to Italy. The plan would be to spend a little time at Lake Como (so, flying into MXP) driving down and departing from FCO.
Here are our constraints:
--For both trips we'd like to travel in at least business class.
--We can pretty easily do a trip of about one business week (9 calendar days) or a little more on each trip.
--If there are some interesting tricks or ways to make the most of routing rules we're willing to tack on another city/country to the trip. (We might even be willing to do something like Caribbean + South America rather than Santiago/Buenos Aires, for example)
--We will be flying with a toddler. Although we could carry her as a lap infant, it would probably be easier to buy a ticket.
--Between the two of us, my wife and I have about 200k UA miles, 250k DL miles, 300k AA miles, 40k US miles, 100k Chase UR points, and 200k Amex MR points. So I think we have some options.
My question:
How can we optimize our use of miles on this trip? My current thinking is to use AA miles to South America and DL miles to Italy. I would really prefer to fly in J but I see that AA offers off peak awards to South America in Y which are tempting because they'd be so much cheaper.
As far as I can tell each of these trips will cost me 100k a person in J or 50-60k a person in Y (with the exception of the AA off peak to South America). Is there any way around this? Any clever tricks I'm missing? I know I can get a free stopover at the North American gateway with AA. Is there a way I can exploit this? Maybe use that stopover to set up the second trip somehow?
Thanks in advance!
Let me comment on your SA travel plans. I've done those trips many times so I kind of feel I'm more qualified to answer that portion of your question. Please note that I don't know your circumstances so I'm just talking off the top of my head. For example, I don't know why you want to meet your family in Chile or Argentina; tickets from La Paz to either of those countries would be rather expensive to them.
1. AA has blocked super saver availability to Lima--couch OR Biz/First. Anytime rates will run you 120K miles (and their first class is a lousy domestic configuration, anyway).
2. United has plenty of availability to Lima on their own metal and on partners.
3. Delta also has decent availability to Lima, and I saw them go for around 100K.
4. Consider going to Lima and then to Puno (JUL). It's just 10K AA each way on LAN (and
much less Avios, I believe 9K for RT!), the availability is great, and you and your relatives can enjoy Lake Titicaca. For your relatives it's supposedly an easy drive or a cheap cab ride from La Paz that again, supposedly, takes about 4 hrs.
5. You can have a free "stopover" in your NA gateway city. I'll give you an example of my own trip to make it clearer.
Next month I'm flying the following route: JFK-LIM-EWR by United (with LIM-IPC-LIM by LAN thrown in for good measure, but that's irrelevant
). And I added a one way to San Diego at the end of my trip. My itinerary is as follows:
JFK-PTY-LIM by Copa (in couch)
LIM-YYZ (biz)- EWR (couch)
EWR-SAN (coach for now due to no F availability, but I will wait, until there is
).
The reason why I was able to add San Diego is that I was careful NOT to fly by United that has Houston as a gateway city. My NA gateway city is New York. So I was able to add this one way to SAN for free (I could almost hear the Untied CSR scratching his head in disbelief
). And if you take business or first, your add on is also in business/first and you can change the dates with no additional fees. Hope it helps.