Unless you are looking at premium seating (Business or First class), paying for the ticket is cheaper than using miles for it.
If they are visiting so many cities, go to United.com (or kayak) and price the entire itinerary, it might be cheaper than using miles. I have family coming from India (end of May, leaving end of June or so) and here is their itinerary
DEL->Chicago->LAS->SFO->LAX->EWR (Newark)->DEL and it came out to about 1550$. Just a round trip DEL-EWR-DEL will be close to $1200 or so.
Originally Posted by
tosaket
My parents are visiting from India so I "might" use my miles for the international travel from DEL to NY. I found cheaper tickets without using miles so I`ll save these miles for there domestic travel. They`ll start from NY, and end there journey in SF covering Washington, Orlando, Vegas and LA. So any domestic airline should be fine. I`m just interested in using miles, dont need hotels. I can probably use one hotel card since I don`t have any.