Originally Posted by
pinniped
No, I didn't see a direct routing. It was sounding like the cash cost of getting to/from LED was going to be high, so that's one advantage of doing the United R/T award with a stopover. Plus it sounded like other options were going to entail a day transiting NYC or London or both...I'd hate to waste that much time unless those cities interest you.
You'd have all of your expensive segments (TATL and to/from LED) covered in the base award, and you'd only be buying the side trip to MAN, which is cheap.
But really, I'd first think of cities that actually interest you...I wouldn't recommend someone drop in a 2-day Frankfurt stopover if they have zero interest in Frankfurt.
Got it. So what I'll likely do is buy the DTW-(ORD)-DUB ticket with cash, spend a couple of days (although, more like a day and a half if I leave on the 18th and land on the 19th) in Dublin (have never been before), then hop over to Manchester for the match and then make my way down to London. Then I'll fly LHR-LED on BA, unfortunately also with cash, but that's the only nonstop. Going back, though, is where my miles are going to be most useful as I'll likely fly TLL-DTW on a Business/First discounted award with United.
As much as I'd love to make the entire trip on miles, it just doesn't seem practical and I definitely don't want to fly to Frankfurt on anything other than a non-stop if I'll be flying to MAN anyways.
But, just for giggles - did you have a set of flights in mind that you looked at? Maybe actually having a routing in front of me will give me pause. Because this
You'd have all of your expensive segments (TATL and to/from LED) covered in the base award, and you'd only be buying the side trip to MAN, which is cheap.
is something I'd like to see illustrated and I wasn't able to replicate a 60K mile deal... I've found 80K flying back from LED on the 5th of January but not 60...