IAH to Nice
 

I have a trip in September to Nice, France that I'm looking to book tomorrow. I have flown Northwest's (DET-AMS) and Lufthansa's (IAH-FRA) newer Airbus models and preferred them over the KLM (IAH-AMS) for comfort and convenience (the KLM 747 had less comfortable seats and no power for my laptop). I'm a CO Plat but have never flown CO to Europe.

I'll be flying business class and I'm generally more inclined to go with comfort on long flights over loyalty to CO. Given the option of flying business class in either CO, British Airways, Air France, KLM, or Lufthansa, which would you choose if you were a CO plat?

This is completely subjective obviously - so many people will give you different answers.

Since you asked "which one if you were a CO Plat", CO/NW/KL/AF are your only choices from that list. BA and LH won't offer you miles at all.

Of CO/NW/KL/AF, I agree I'd stay away from KL because they fly old 747's into IAH. CO does a 777 direct to CDG which will be a nice flight. AF does either a 777 or A330, depending on day and time of flight. Both of those would be nice. NW, generally, is rated at the bottom of this pack for international business.

My vote in order: CO, AF, NW.

-RM

I'd also select CO, AF, NW, with NW being a very distant third.

However, here's an option you haven't included and I'd be curious to know why. Why not DL on IAH/JFK/NCE? You'd get your CO OP miles/EQM's. I don't particularly like flying through CDG. The airport is a mess. It takes ages for lines to move. NCE is a nicer, smaller airport with a non-stop flight on DL from JFK. Just my two cents.

Ditto...
 

ContinentalFan is right - Nice non-stop from JFK on Delta is the way to go. Much better than CDG, Calling JFK better than CDG shows how bad CDG is...

CO IAH-AMS, then AMS-NCE on AF/KL would be very nice, except for the poor connection time at AMS, at least in the current schedule.

Timing for CO46 IAH-AMS is one of the best for US-Europe. 7:10pm departure. You can get your full BF dining experience, and still have plenty of time to rest.

Only problem is that it arrives AMS 11:50a, and you can't make it on the 12:10p flight to NCE. Next one is at 5:55p.

Second best would be CO10 to CDG on the 772. A little earlier departure at 6:40p, but still decent. 11:05a arrival, and you can connect to AF at 12:40p. If you miss that one, there's another at 1:20p.

I don't think there's a perfect solution to this. First, I wholeheartedly agree on avoiding CDG. It's a mess.

Unless you're looking to to get a flying start on a status run with *A or OW, this leaves KL, CO or DL.

While the DL option probably looks good on paper, I'm inherently hesitant to connect through an east coast "hub" especially when my onwards flight is a once-a-day TATL. (I'm guessing DL doesn't fly several times a day to NCE). Any type of NY-area air traffic delays can cause you to miss your JFK-NCE flight and possibly be stranded for a day, or best case be re-routed somewhere through Europe.

CO's BF is a better product than KL's business class. But remember that the BF seat is different between the 777 that serves CDG/LGW and the 767's that serve AMS. An option to catch the 12:10 AMS-NCE flight that rk mentions is to catch CO58 IAH-AMS on the days that it operates. (dep 3:30pm, arr 8:20am, still 4 hours at AMS mind you)

Let us know how you decide to go :)

If I read the OP correctly they will be in Biz , so that will give them some extra leeway, since DL & AF have a number of flights each day to CDG out of JFK (and as long as there are flights that are suppose to leave after the NCE flight) I would think that DL would put the OP on a CDG bound flight.

Id go with the NCE flight if I was the 1 flying.

I now fly through JFK to Europe at least once a month. I have never had a problem. If a person is nervous about a connection--a legitimate concern--it's easy to set up a multi-city itinerary online and get an earlier flight to JFK giving plenty of time to enjoy the DL lounge.

But what if you were using miles for IAH->NCE
 

This question comes at a great time for me. I'm Platinum and have been scrounging miles to get to 400,000 so I can take the family unit to Europe next summer. 4 * 100,000 each for a BF round trip is the right number, right? So we want to start off in Nice and ideally return from Edinburgh, but that's all open. Anyway, I've been looking at how to get from IAH to Nice and wasn't really liking anything. We're looking to go next May after #1 son gets out of classes in college (anytime after the 9th of May) so we have flexibility. I like avoiding CDG (I hate that airport) if possible, but other than that I'm pretty open.

All of the feedback on this question has been great (y'all are awesome on this forum! And yes I've read all of the FAQs and done my search homework) but my question has to do with how you would respond if miles were being used. I've not flown Virgin or Delta so can't compare the service differences, and I'm still confused about using miles (I think it's possible on Virgin but not on Delta, right? Wrong? It's all sooo confusing). Thanks for any help.

Cheers,

Lee.

Welcome to FT

the easy part 1st, your CO miles can be used for free tkts on any SkyTeam Member (Delta,AirFrance,Czech Air,KLM,NorthWest,Alitalia) also CO has a couple of other Carriers that it has arrangements with but arent ST members such as Virgin.

2nd, I really hope that you R Extremely flex as I highly doubt you will be able to get 4 Biz seats on the same flights for everyone. so you might have to use a couple of different carriers thats if you can get anything at all.

The biggest problem with any Airline Program isnt getting the miles but finding Flights, which for Biz Class is hard enough for 1 tkt let alone 4 tkts.

Co usually doesnt release its BF seat till its close to the time you want to fly as they would rather sell them then give them away. DL I find has no problem as long as its not a Skysaver Award you want but are willing to pay 2x the miles for the seat, thats any cabin and even for a Domestic flight.

Alitalia doesnt know if it will be in Biz day to day so I would stay away from them for now.

dont mean to paint a dismal pic but thats generally how it is out there, you really will hav eto flex and be prepared to fly around in circles and not on the same flights together. Yes a Miracle might occur and you land 4 Biz tkts but I would have started my prays yrs ago if thats what I want, that is unless you are willing to pay 2x the miles for a Rule Buster

Connecting in CDG from CO ex-IAH to NCE with AF is unfortunately not very easy as CO uses the worst possible part of CDG2, 2A. Connecting between AF flights from IAH to NCE involves transfer between 2F and 2E, which IMHO is much more straightforward. One of the flights back to IAH usually boards from S3, which is a fine, brand new satellite.

Welcome to FT!

As craz pointed out, you can redeem miles on DL. In fact, when I have called to book flights on CO, often DL comes up as an option.

You're flying in the summer, but you still might have luck in finding BusinessElite seats on DL, four would be a stretch, but it's worth asking. Here is a list of BusinessElite destinations from DL. The carrier serves both NCE and EDI.

There's always a chance that you could get coach seats and waitlist for business--at least, why not call CO and ask the carrier about this option.

Of course, who knows what next year will bring. Perhaps CO will announce new European destinations in October. Some of us here would bet on NCE, but I wouldn't plan a trip around that long shot!

Let us know how your attempts to schedule this trip work out.

Thanks for all the tips!
 

I ended up booking IAH-JFK-NCE as several folks suggested. The good thing beyond avoiding CDG is that it actually allows me to leave IAH significantly later even with allowing a big connection buffer.

Thanks!

Can you elaborate? Are you comparing to AF's IAH flight?

Because CO10 IAH-CDG departs at 6:40p. DL's JFK-NCE departs 7:00p ET. To get to JFK to fly DL, you need to leave IAH at 10:40am on CO.

Am I missing something here?

I realize you have already booked flights, but I thought I'd add my two cents for anyone doing a search. I just returned from a trip flying AF J from IAH to CDG on the 9:55 Airbus flight. That was one of the nicest flight experiences I have ever had. The seats on the AF Airbus fit my body better than any of the other Skyteam J seats. I connected to a Heathrow flight, and it was a snap. I even had time for a shower in the AF lounge before boarding the AF flight to Heathrow. The arrivals lounge had closed at 2:00, but this lounge had one shower room.

Last summer, I flew IAH to CDG on CO and that was a great experience. I was connecting to Turin on AF, and that connection was easy, as well. It was probably a five/ten minute walk. The CO and AF flights from IAH were both excellent, but different. I would give both a top score. The CO 777 seats don't fit me well, but other people find them very comfortable.

This summer I returned (two days ago) from BRU through EWR. I have never seen so many families with children of all ages in BF. I had an easy time booking this flight which makes me think it might be a good place to begin looking for award travel to Europe. This was my first time to clear customs at EWR, and it was a mess, but I didn't have an interaction with anyone I would consider rude. The only exception might be the two women at the PC entrance checking cards. They acted much more like TSA employees barking orders than airline club greeters.