I will be flying from New York to Milan in Late April to visit my brother in Italy and wanted to know what is the best possible way to use my miles. I currently have ~60,000 miles in my onepass account and have gold status. I also get the 5% discount through my Chase CC. My questions are 1) Is Continental a good carrier to Europe or is there one of their code share partners that I should use? I have only flown Continental's domestic product. 2) Since tickets are relatively inexpensive (~$800), should I use the miles to upgrage to Business/First instead of an outright ticket? I have always heard that the best possible use of miles is to upgrade on international flights. Thx

$800 is more expensive for off-peak travel to Europe than fares have been in a long time. That being said, if you buy the $800 ticket there will almost certainly be a fee plus miles involved in upgrading from Y to BF, assuming the inventory becomes available. You don't have enough miles to redeem for a BF seat outright, so the upgrade would be your only choice using miles.

If you want to fly non-stop the other is Alitalia, but you will fare no better on upgrades with them, though at least you'll get free drinks in Y during the flight.

What about one of the other SkyTeam Alliance members like AirFrance. Do they have a better product then continental to europe?

For my money, Northwest on an A330 is the best SkyTeam coach product, followed by AF (at least until they start with 10-abreast on the 777) but none of the coach products are going to set your world on fire. However, from New York, I think the fact that the CO flight is non-stop easily trumps any difference in comfort.

To be honest, if you are using miles, you will be stuck with whichever airlines have availability and there is no guarantee there will be more than one.

AF is installing 10-abreast in coach?? KL really has degraded AF - can't wait for that to happen to CO when it merges with another carrier. Is KL going 10-abreast, as well?

It depends on what class of service you are considering and what amenities and services are important to you. For coach, if you want a more seat pitch and AVOD, go with NW, then KL, then, to a lesser extent, AF. Avoid DL and CO. If you want free booze, go with AF. If you want consistently good service (for the most part), do not care about AVOD, can endure poor seat pitch, and want to pay for booze, go with CO.

For business class, there are many threads and discussions in this forum that compare the Skyteam J products.

Well, AF has had 10-abreast on their Carribean and Indian Ocean planes (CIO) for a while. I then heard that they were going to operate some 10-abreast on US routes, starting this summer, and sure enough, I just checked out the seat map for AF7 JFK-CDG on 7/15 and ExpertFlyer shows the dreaded 3-4-3.

At first, I would have thought that this was the CIO version of the 77W, but this plane has F and J, while the CIO version only offers 2 rows of J and no F. So, this is obviously a new configuration. The CIO version does not seem to have extra pitch, like EK, and it is unclear if this one will. And there does not appear to be any Y+, as on the CIO version.

KLM is going 10-abreast on their new 77Ws from what I can tell as well. Considering that AF seems to treat KLM as an in-house LCC, this is not surprising.

The only question is what will be worse 10-abreast 777s or 9-abreast 787s?

And, let's be honest, do you think it will actually take a merger for CO to go 10-abreast? If they think they can get away with it, they will.

By all accounts, coach on a KL 747 should be avoided, as well. 31" pitch. No in-seat video. Terribly uncomfortable seats. My wife flew on one last year and still hasn't forgiven me. It sounds like, hands down, the worst ST product in the sky.

I flew a KL 743 in coach about five or six years ago. It was awful in terms of pitch and lack of IFE and probably is the worst Skyteam product out there.

I would never fly coach on any airline that offered 10-abreast on a 777. And, I think 9 abreast on the 787 probably will be only marginally better.

I wouldnt rule out AZ which also flys non-stop from both JFK and EWR. Bu now all their wide-bodys should have been redone. I flew 2 yrs ago on the old 767 out of BOS, what a dump. But flew back on the 777 into EWR what a Dream. Of cause Im talking about their Biz cabin. Didnt really check out the Coach cabin

Indeed, and, of course, CO will be 9-abreast on the seven-eight...

If you can manage to upgrade to BF, CO is definitely far superior to AZ into Milan nonstop and pretty much on a par with the other carriers mentioned where you will have to connect in Paris or Amsterdam,

If 12-abreast 380s and 10-abreast 787s are what it takes for airlines to survive in the future, so be it. As long as they're offering PE, as that's what I'll be flying then.

I take it you have never flown on AZs 777 with the new leather seats in Biz. And supposingly they put them onto the 767s as well.

Had you I highly doubt you would have said what you did.

For the seats alone , Id put up with AZ every time

So how do you reconcile Smizek's comments that seem to put PE further out of reach? I agree that PE may be the future, but CO has shown no indication that they want to compete in this space. It seems silly and shortsighted, but CO has had opportunities to offer PE and hasn't done so, so I will assume that they won't be leading the charge.

If I were a traveler likely to switch to PE, I would just switch now to BA or VS. CO offers nothing of value to the PE+ traveler that I can discern.

10-abreast on 787? Ouch! What's the seat width at that point, 3.2 inches?

Who is considering that? Just curious.