Creative Itinerary to Maximize Value
 

Hey FT'ers! I've been lingering around here for a while, but I'm still relatively new at this, so go easy on me.

I'm getting married in February, and my fiancée and I are going on our honeymoon directly after the wedding. We'll be flying SAT-MCO for the wedding, and MCO-NYC for the honeymoon. I'm just about at 100k CO OnePass miles, so I want to book two RT F tickets for us.

My question is: can I somehow book an SAT-NYC ticket with a 4-day stopover in MCO on the way there, and no stopover on the way back? My other solution is to just by Southwest RT tickets from SAT-MCO, and get the F tickets to NYC in between - but I'd like it if we could ride up front the whole way.

Has anyone ever created an itinerary like this? I'll probably call CO today and ask what they can do for me, but I wanted to ask the pros first.

This question would probably be better asked in the CO forum. Every airline has their own rules on stopovers.

Will do. Thanks.

dont...a moderator will move the thread....posting the same ? in 2 places is against ft policy.....

i would call co with the ?.....good luck...

Lesson learned for the day :) Thanks.

I'll call CO and report back with my results.

don't feel bad....crossposting was implied in post #2 above....perhaps the policy has changed....

Moving to the CO forum.

Aviators99
Moderator
MilesBuzz!

I called CO. They said they can't give me a stopover in MCO because it's not a "stopover airport" on the way to NYC. I asked if they could even route me through MCO to NYC, and they said no.

I wanted to travel the whole trip in F, but I guess what I'll end up doing is getting the SAT-MCO RT ticket from Southwest, and I'll get the MCO-NYC RT F ticket from CO, with miles.

Not worth the miles, if you ask me. Only a 2.5 hour flight on the books. There are also few F seats on the direct MCO-EWR flight now for most days in February. (checking as if I were non-elite). Of course, MCO-IAH-EWR is.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/5.0.0.591 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Stopovers are permitted on lower 48+Canada awards only with extra miles being paid. If you are willing to cough up the points you should be able to get SAT-(IAH)-MCO//MCO-EWR//EWR-SAT as a single awardn but it will be an extra 10K points/person. I'm pretty sure the stopover up-charge is the same in coach or first class.

Congrats on the upcoming nuptials!!

Wow - over 44k posts! That's the most impressive number I've seen on this forum!

Thanks for the congrats! :) The CO rep didn't seem to think a stopover in MCO was a possibility at all. She said, "That wouldn't be an award ticket if you stopped in MCO. You'd have to pay for that." However, I'm pretty persistent, so perhaps I'll just keep calling back until someone says it's possible.

As far as flying up front goes, I've pretty much decided on not doing F, because the "benefits" of F on domestic flights just aren't worth my miles. I'll book coach and save the miles for our international trips/RTW trip.

Simply have them refer to the rules of the Series 0 award and read about the provisions for a stopover. Or have them go to their own website where it is pretty clearly noted: http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...?O=US&D=US&P=T.

It is also worth correcting my post above: the stopover costs 20K extra in F so there is an up-charge from the 10K cost in Y.

From what I've heard so far, this is my problem:

"Stopovers and open jaws are permitted unless otherwise specified."

And from the travel award page:

Stopover Rewards allow you to take a scheduled break in travel on the route between your point of origin and your destination city (e.g., a stopover in Houston on a flight from Los Angeles to Newark).

* Stopover Reward travel is valid within or between the 48 contiguous United States, Alaska and Canada.
* Point-of-origin and destination cities may not be used as en-route stopovers.
* Generally, stopovers are allowed only along the most direct route of travel.


It seems like a YMMV / depends on what rep you get type of situation. I guess I could keep calling back and asking for the same thing until I get someone who's willing to give it to me.

I would use the 10k extra per ticket - I decided on flying Y.

That rule is generally not enforced particularly strictly. There are plenty of examples. If the agent puts it in their computer it should price fine.

If you're flying Y anyways it might be worth looking at the cost of just buying the tickets. With the markets you're looking at I wouldn't expect them to be too pricey.

That's a good move, not only in sense of using the miles wisely, but you don't want to spoil the bride to be this early in the game with domestic First..... it's a matter of managing expectations.