Originally Posted by
OliverB
That's basically where we're at right now. I know that UA doesn't always display ALL award flights on Star Alliance partners, and I've discovered the following which depart VCE on 10/30 which sounds perfect... however the flight time is prohibitive as I don't want to have to be at Marco Polo at 4:30-5:00 AM; waking up at 3AM to shower and catch a boat - that would defeat the purpose of spending that night at the Gritti, even if it is booked on points. Here's the itin:
Venice Istanbul(IST)
06:30 09:55
TK1458 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 319
Operated by Turkish Airlines
Istanbul(IST) San Francisco
12:55 17:10
TK079 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 77W
Operated by Turkish Airlines
Total travel time 18h40min
It's also not a short flight, at least compared to our incoming flight from SFO to VCE at little more than 13 hrs. This seems like a huge headache and I'd really appreciate your input... also if anyone knows of other Star Alliance award seats I've missed, please let me know!
Back in May, my wife and I flew back VCE-SFO via IST. here's our flights:
Day, Date Flight Class Departure City and Time Arrival City and Time Aircraft Meal
Sun, 24MAY15 TK1458 X VENICE, ITALY
(VCE) 7:30 AM ISTANBUL, TURKEY
(IST) 10:55 AM A-319
Flight operated by TURKISH AIRLINES.
Sun, 24MAY15 LH1299 X ISTANBUL, TURKEY
(IST) 1:55 PM FRANKFURT, GERMANY
(FRA) 4:05 PM A-321
Flight operated by LUFTHANSA.
Sun, 24MAY15 UA927 X FRANKFURT, GERMANY
(FRA) 5:25 PM SAN FRANCISCO, CA
(SFO) 7:45 PM 747-400 Dinner
I would have liked to have traveled on the IST-SFO nonstop. However, back in May this TK nonstop route just started, there was no award availability.
I just looked for Oct 2016, this 7:30AM VCE-IST flight is available as economy saver for oct 23 and the prior weekends. Similarly the IST-SFO nonstop is available for Oct 23. I'm guessing the 7:30AM VCE-IST and the nonstop IST-SFO will become available within a week. One of my coworker and her family took the IST-SFO a couple of month ago and loved the service. For this 7:30AM flight, we stayed at a B&B that was 15min away from the airport. We got up at 4AM. Airport security was pretty quick, so we probably didn't need that much time. We spent a fair amount of time waiting in line for the 6AM opening of the currency exchange office to process the tax refund.