DelrayChris

Congrats!!

Find a foreign airline partner with a 3-class cabin and fly in F. The service will be far superior than anything you will receive from a US-based airline.

This web site is helpful for searching for airlines/flights/times/connections:

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Seat Charts (links on page link directly to airline web site seat info):

http://www.airlinequality.com/Experience/seat_plans.htm

tfred

I just made reservations on LH ewer fra fco for this may. Going in first at 130k. Used most of my miles from continental with the extras transferred from Amex to CO

PETEFLYS

air canada is your friend for this

afmiami

How much did you pay for taxes?

jmw2323

should be less than $100 if booking through CO

tfred

only $109 in taxes. i think that is very reasonable

we used CO on VS UC last year and it was double that - still a bargain

afmiami

It is very reasonable. Awards through LH M&M cost 4 times more!

southy1978

This past summer, my wife and I flew into Naples and out of Venice via Paris using Air France. I believe it was only 100k or 125k miles roundtrip per person and they were flexible on the routing. Booked it all online.

Delta wanted to charge us something closer to 500k miles for each ticket.

cirrussk

Hi there,

I need input from the forum on the best way to redeem MR points. Traveling with my wife from PHX to Italy round trip Sat June 2-sat June 9. It's our first time there so we wanted to take in a little of the country.

What's the best way of booking the airline tickets ? We are completely open on the city to initially fly in to / out of. From there we will take transportation during the week and see the country. I'm having trouble finding the best route with the best point upgrade. Would prefer business class. Maybe buy Econ and use points to upgrade to business?

We have about 100k points for the trip and AmEx Plat.

Thanks for all the suggestions!!

Sam

FlyerChrisK

International upgrades tend to come with steep copays that bring the cost of a coach ticket up substantially. Putting down an extra $1000 (or more) per ticket is not especially exciting (your upgrade might also not clear).

What are discount business tickets looking like right now? You could book a revenue ticket and an award and probably come out about even.

cirrussk

Basically $4900 each on US Airways. Which transfer partners go to US Air? Do I need to look on the US website for how many points required?

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

No: you need to look at the redemption rate of the program whose miles you will be redeeming, even if you will be redeeming those miles for travel on a partner carrier. Don't overlook the fuel surcharges that some programs impose on such redemptions.

roknroll

With the AMEX platinum, you can do a 60k points advance. Also during the course of redeeming points, if you have paid off your AMEX they will let you use any 'pending' points that normally wouldn't post until the next billing cycle. So really, you have about 160k+ MR points. With the advance, you just need to earn the points back within a year.

Finding award availability on short notice, during the summer is going to be the toughest part. If you aren't savy at the tips and tricks for searching awards, and aren't willing to spend several hours researching rules, routes, options, etc then you might want to either use pay with points or just buy tickets. Using the full points advance would give you about $2,000 in value for the points (this takes into account the 20% rebate you get back for paying with points).

Another option would be to enlist the help of the many award booking services out there, and let a pro do the searching for you. It'll cost a couple hundred dollars, but for 2 business class tickets paid for with points, you'd be saving a lot more.

Centurion

Well you are summer season for school kids so Delta Sky Miles (Pesos) will be require a huge amount way more than 100,000 miles. But Delta would be easiest and most simple. Best value in the past was continental parter but that direct method is gone but you could try and ANA partner.

mtkeller

False, at least assuming OP is willing to buy a cash ticket on another carrier to get to an international gateway. AF has inventory out of LAX for 2 in Y on 2 June 2012, connecting to any number of locations in Italy that would come in at 60K per person round-trip with DL miles. The return is trickier, as the 9 June is unavailable on ST or *A. I can find seats out of some cities in Italy to SFO on 10 June, however, on AF. If you need to leave from LAX and return to SFO (didn't check if SFO departures are available on the 22nd), the flights in Italy need to be into and out of the same location (although it's possible to put in a stopover en route, say LAX-CDG-LIN(stop)-FCO-CDG-SFO). The CO engine doesn't find anything on the 9th or 10th of June returning (PHX, LAX, or SFO), but it does find an outbound PHX-YYZ-FCO on the 2nd. ANA would come in at 60K for *A award for PHX-Italy, so no mileage savings there. It looks like SkyMiles might be the best option here.