Hi all, is it impossible to get a standard reward seat to europe in june? I am starting to think so.

June 10 I need to be in London. I tried mke, ord, mdw, msn to both airports (lgw, lhr) on the 8 or9th. return can be from the 19-22. did not find a single standard reward seat.

I am not surprised CO is slothing all the prime time europe seats for itself. but there must be a way...

so far i have tried

-flying to another european airport and taking easyjet

-being flexible in dates. I have tried 7-8-9 to and 19-20-21 from


There are no reward seats to be found. Can anyone think of an approach I have not tried?

thanks for your help

alexa

In fairness, standard level award seats to Europe in June are very hard to get on any airline.

Did you try all partner airlines? I am assuming you at least tried VS since you looked into LHR, but more partners = more routing opportunities.

Standard award seats to London in early June were available back in December, but they've been gone for awhile now. They always go fast.

DL and VS are usually more open than CO.

Did you call the rewards desk and ask for partners (or even a combination of partners)?

CLE-DL-JFK-VS-LHR might even be a possibility.

Wait until June 6th- you might get lucky. Other than that, pay or play, i.e. sleazy pass. Aren't these miles fun to earn?

I went to "Dave and Busters" a few weeks ago with my nephews and had a blast playing Skeeball. Dollar after dollar, the tickets poured out of the machines like cherry Kool-aid at a CO staff meeting. At the end of the evening we walk up to the prize counter with our buckets of tickets and leave with a pez dispenser and two furbees.
A great marketing scheme, indeed. Just remember, most of the fun is in "earning" the miles-at least as far as you know.

I vote for this one as post of the year. Anyone second?

Pez dispenser and a couple of furbees...LOL!

I second. CO just used those FC seperator ropes to hang itself.....

> Hi all, is it impossible to get a standard reward seat to europe in june? I am starting to think so.

So far, I've found it impossible to get ANY standard reward seats to anywhere on CO...especially to such exotic locales as STL and MCI.

A Pez dispenser and a couple of Furbees... oh, boy, you're right about that. I second the motion.

As for Europe: call the OnePass awards folks and try for Delta metal. For Standard awards, DL seat availability is much better than CO. You sound pretty flexible: you could go (MKE or ORD) - (CVG or ATL) - LGW, or (MKE or ORD) - (JFK or ATL or CVG) - CDG, then get Eurostar.

You have a much better chance with DL metal. CO rarely posts Standard awards to anywhere four months in advance, never mind Europe. I told this story in another thread, but I just organized some June transcon (WAS-SEA) award travel for a relation... the OnePass award website showed nothing at all at the Standard level in either class for any day for weeks at a time, but the OP awards desk set me up with an ideal roundtrip on DL aircraft at the Standard rate in about five minutes.

[This message has been edited by BearX220 (edited Feb 19, 2004).]

Have you tried to use NW as a reward? Detroit is an easy connection for you.

Adding to everything else... make sure that you check from a gateway (EWR/IAH/CLE) to your destination only. What has been found is that there are sometimes seats from, say CLE-LON, but there is nothing from, say MKE-CLE. Since there is nothing on the first segment, the whole flight shows unavailable.

------------------
Bob

Yes, but don't you still have to get TO the gateway? I guess I must be missing something.



[This message has been edited by H53Epilot (edited Feb 19, 2004).]

If you want standard award anywhere, it is best to look about 28 to 14 days out. It is not hard to get standard award if you are a flexable and a last minute type of person. If you need to plan well in advance, it always only shows easy pass.

Good luck.

Bah. I was able to book 5 standard awards on the same flight to Cancun for the second week in February, back sometime in December/January. I saw them pop up, and was surprised I could still get 'em a couple weeks later when I went to book.

Are you Platinum? I've heard rumors that Plats get more standard award choices...