Originally Posted by
duranza
Ok now I have more questions if you don't mind.. newbie here with booking terms.
I have never selected a flight in a specific fare.. I just booked the cheapest. So don't know what Y or J means.
Our goal is to save money so I won't be purchasing any of the flights.
We will be stopping over at SFO for 3 days then fly to Maui for 8 days then take an interisland flight to Kona and fly out of Hilo after exploring the island 7 days.
We won't be going to HNL.
Leaving from Roc not EWR.
Not interested in flying to Asia but Europe maybe a couple of years down the road.
We do have a ballpark of dates so looking at Jan 10th to 13th in SFO then returning home around the Jan 28th again looking for saver award but now since the return flight is so long I have looked at the mixed cabins flights which 2 of the return legs are in first and the last ( short distance) is in economy
OK see I didn't know that early flights were cheaper... guess I will look at the cost first of the flights then see what they are in miles.
We are only going with United since we both now have the United Explorer and that has given us the miles we need plus the ones that Chase Prefered has also.
Or do you mean I can use the miles from United to use with AA?
thanks for your help ^
Ahh, more helpful details. You certainly have plenty of time to plan, and this is certainly do-able. As you want a stopover and an open jaw, you will require a round-trip (or multi-city) itinerary - constructing one-way awards won't help. That said, the inter-island flights aren't included in the 40,000 point price, so you can keep those separate and book later(* see below). They are an additional 5,000 points each, so your suggested trip is 45,000 all coach or 65,000 one-way in first. As to whether it's worth the extra 20,000... Sure, why not. If you were an elite member with a chance for a free upgrade, I'd probably say no. But since that's not an option, and given you probably don't want to pay $$ for an upgrade, miles are your only option. I will often book my family a stopover in California on the return to break up the trip and avoid an overnight flight - but as you will have already used your stopover, this is also not an option. So, as you've already found, the multi-city search should allow you to check ROC-SFO, SFO-OGG, KOA-ROC (again, I would keep the inter-island separate*).
What QBK was noting earlier is that by far, the most comfortable way to travel home would be utilizing the HNL-EWR non-stop flight. That's assuming they even had saver awards available for that flight - they're hard to come by. That would make your return route KOA-HNL-EWR-ROC. Odds are the multi-city search will include this routing in the list of flight options, but it will cost 5,000 more miles due to the KOA-HNL sector. If I were in your shoes, would I pay an extra 20,000 miles to fly home in domestic first? Yes, you have enough miles so why not. Would I pay an extra 25,000 miles to fly home in first on the HNL-EWR non-stop if it were available? Absolutely yes!
* In your case, you are going from OGG-KOA with no other connections, so I suggest to keep the search simple and handle this reward separately. If on the other hand you were flying from the mainland and needed to connect (same-day) to OGG, or you were flying out of KOA and needed to make a same-day connection to the mainland, I would want everything in a single reservation to protect yourself in the case of mis-connects. Make sense? Also note that even with a United credit card, you will be responsible for baggage fees on your inter-island flight.