I may have the chance of attending a conference in San Francisco in September. Lucky me.

However, I expect the company will say I need to fly down the back as it's not a chargeable piece of work. I was thinking as I have a load of BMI miles I could use them to fly in C or F and as long as the cost is less than the Y ticket the travel agent could get I could reclaim the taxes as the company saves as well.

Now assuming BD revenue management release me some EDI-MAN-ORD and ORD-MAN-EDI seats then all I need to worry about is the ORD-SFO and SFO-ORD legs.

I can get an outbound ORD-SFO leg (according to ANA) but cannot find anything for SFO-ORD on the return part of the trip that gets in before the BD ORD-MAN flight departs.

My departure date is 20 Sep and my return date is 26 Sep.

I've put the start and end destinations into staralliance.com and put every routing offered by that into ANA with no luck.

EDI-MAN-ORD is coming in @ £232.90 in taxes and charges (£345.70 miles+cash)

ORD-MAN-EDI is coming in @ $253.58 in taxes and charges ($458.98 miles+cash). I can buy SFO-ORD on united.com for $245.50

yes, those pounds and dollars signs are correct.

So, some questions:

1 - Can anyone offer any alternatives, any valid routing considered?

2 - Does anyone know how much adding ORD-SFO to EDI-MAN-ORD will add to the redemption booking (even a rough figure) and again how much will adding SFO-ORD to ORD-MAN-EDI add to the redemption booking so I can get my figures ready.

3 - Is there anyway to get UA to release a seat on the return leg (I assume the answer here is no) or do UA release seat later?

4 - If I need to buy a ticket for SFO-ORD on UA will the through check my bags to EDI or will I need to reclaim in ORD. Would this be a painfull process?

Thanks for any help

LL