Need help MSP to KBP
Hi,
I’ve looking through the forum here and is seems filled with a bunch of knowledgeable and helpful people. I need both at the moment. From what I've seen its a great forum unfortunately I am in a bit of an information overload here from reading through all the posts here. Dang it is addictive though. I keep getting sidetracked from why I am here.
The reason I am posting is I am considering a flight from MSP to KBP (Minneapolis to Kiev, Ukraine). I’ve never booked an award travel ticket on NWA so I am not familiar with all the nuances and I am not sure if it is my best bet.
I am Silver Elite and have about 120,000 miles banked at the moment. I plan to leave 2/29/08 and return 3/9/08. It appears there are no PerkSaver seats available and only PerkPass. I honestly have no idea what the difference is. I was sort of shocked that they wanted 50,000 miles for each leg of the trip for coach. Is this normal? Is PerkSaver lower?
What I am trying to balance is should I use the miles or buy a ticket. The best price I’ve seen on a ticket is $703 or so including taxes. So should I use my miles? By a ticket at the $700 price and see if I can get an upgrade later or some other option I haven’t thought of or I’m unaware of? Is there some place I can find the number of available seats for Business class upgrades?
I don't want to make an expensive mistake and I will likely need to travel back to Ukraine in mid April so maybe that is a better time to consider using my miles if the fares go up then.
What is the difference between the PerkSaver and PerkPass? What is the normal mileage required for an award ticket to Europe? According to where I looked on NWA it appeared to be 120,000 for RT on coach but that seems very high.
If it matters or not, I’ve been traveling a lot over the last few months. I’ve gotten a lot of complimentary upgrades. Does this some how factor into my odds of getting an upgrade later on this? For example I’d done 5 RT to Boston over the last 2 months and I’ve been upgraded to first class on 7 out of those 10 flight segments.
Thanks in advance for any help. I need to decide by tomorrow if at all possible so any immediate help will be appreciated. I’ve tried finding as much info on this site as possible but I seem to be missing what would be most relevant and I am running out of time. Almost are any of those websites like "Firstclassflyer" worth the money?