Originally Posted by
heynow999
HI all. Im new here
What I would like to do is take my wife and two teenage kids to Europe next summer, specifically Austria. My grandparents were from there and it is next up on our list of places to visit.
I know I have a lot barriers, we need to go in July or August because of school, I need points for 4 people and I would like to fly direct if possible, and out of yyz. I believe I can get the points by December as I already have 100k+, Im signing my wife up for some cards, and I have a small business I can funnel cash through Amex>Paytm, sadly mostly taxes.
We would like to go for 3 weeks and would like to spend the majority of our time in Vienna and Salzburg, but as it is a vacation and we will rent a car, driving from another country is not out of the question. Basically we need to avoid the fuel surcharge from AC, and would like to spend as little time as possible in planes and airports. When you are a family of four these things are much more difficult
I see some options like yyz to brussels which puts us within a 10 hour drive of Austria, which can be its own little side trip.
Im looking for suggestions on what cities to fly to (to avoid the surcharge) when I would need to book, Thanks
Originally Posted by
Stgermainparis
The travel credit is for incidentals like baggage fees (although a Canadian Amex may be different). I’m seeing YYZ-CDG and MUC nonstop and various others for three weeks in July for $650-1k USD in case you don’t want a stopover. Always look for round trip or at least a ticket with a return even if from another city bc I’ve noticed esp with Canada and Europe RT will price the same as OW.
The problem with doing some awards and some revenue (paid) tickets is that they may not match up as the best redemptions. Award flight that you’ve got the points for may be more expensive as a paid ticket.
I understand your frustration. We have three kids and it’s hard to get award seats for us all. I realized long ago that I have to plan two years out. A year to accrue points and then be ready to ticket a year before flights. That’s the only way I’ve managed to make it work.
Generally my strategy is as follows:
1) Where to do you want to go? Go to
https://flightconnections.com and put in your end point, filtering by Star Alliance
2) Determine what airlines you want to fly - typically looking to limit YQ if not AC super elite - LX, TP, UA, LO, TK
3) If there are no direct routes across to NA, note all of the valid connection points for the airlines you want
4) From those major connection points in Europe, find all of the routes that map back to major NA hubs - YYZ, YUL, ORD, BOS, EWR, IAD etc..
5) Use united.com one way award search to look at 30+ days of availability at a time to see who has availability and when on what routes - typically would search hub to hub, not the entire route - so BOS-MUC, ORD-MUC and then find the short flights after that
6) Find some departures that work, add your trip length and repeat for the return leg to find something that lines up
7) Once I've narrowed dates, I will also setup alerts on expertflyer for all of the routes / options if it's not exactly what I want or if I booked something that I may change if other options come up at some point
This summer we did Vienna and Croatia for 4 people in J and the availability was still decent 3 months out.
YYZ-LIS-VIE - TP J - stop
VIE-DBV - OS J - destination
ZAG-ZRH-ORD - LX J - open jaw
ORD-YYZ AC J
Originally Posted by
Stgermainparis
The travel credit is for incidentals like baggage fees (although a Canadian Amex may be different). I’m seeing YYZ-CDG and MUC nonstop and various others for three weeks in July for $650-1k USD in case you don’t want a stopover. Always look for round trip or at least a ticket with a return even if from another city bc I’ve noticed esp with Canada and Europe RT will price the same as OW.
The problem with doing some awards and some revenue (paid) tickets is that they may not match up as the best redemptions. Award flight that you’ve got the points for may be more expensive as a paid ticket.
I understand your frustration. We have three kids and it’s hard to get award seats for us all. I realized long ago that I have to plan two years out. A year to accrue points and then be ready to ticket a year before flights. That’s the only way I’ve managed to make it work.
Same with us getting 4 in J to Europe or Asia.
We're booking for next summer and saving for the summer after that.