Originally Posted by SuperG1955

I’m planning a trip for next fall and need some guidance. It will be an award trip JFK-FCO and return for approximately two weeks, starting in mid-October 2014. All tickets will be Business Class. I’d obviously like to try for Low Award tickets for all of us but there’s not a lot of flexibility on dates due to activities planned in Italy.

My wife and I (both PM) will be travelling together on one schedule and we are taking friends, who have no status, who will be travel on a different schedule. We will use miles from my SM account for 2 tickets and miles from my wife’s SM account for the other 2 tickets.

Here are my questions:

1. Should I book the trips as soon as the outbounds are available and then change the return trips when they open up or should I take a chance and wait until the full schedule is available before booking? I’m presuming that as PM’s we can change the award tix that we give to others without fees or penalties, is that correct?

2. Since DL should only have lie flats on all their aircraft for this route by then, am I better off booking DL or DL/AZ codeshare or AZ? Research has indicated that the food is better on AZ and the service is better on DL. Are there substantial reasons to use one or the other?

3. If anyone knows, is this a good time of year to non-rev or use ID90 or ZED for this route? We can do our travel this way but don't have a lot of flexibibity on the outbound side.