Hey everyone!

I need your help. I want to go on a MR from now till mid Aug. I can spend about $1,600-1,700 (have a credit I have to use). With prices going way up I cant find a good deal. It can be international and go over 2 or 3 days. Any tips or ideas? It would be going out of CLE.

Thanks!

More details please --

How many miles you need?

Any regions you'd like to try out?

Just wait it out, right now is a lousy time of year for MRs.

As many miles as I can get. Its mainly because I have the credit that expires soon.

when does the voucher expire?

London sale? Click on Cleveland-London arrow...

Up to 12,000 EQMs if you go via IAH, for about $1700 (or possibly less...I spent all of 30 seconds looking). Via EWR is cheaper, of course.

I was trying to come up with a cheap approx 10k EQMs from CLE

how about this:
CLE-IAH-PDX (portland Oregon) H fare RT 8/16/08- 8/18/08

$588

Total miles 2,916 each way at 150% EQM making for near 9k EQMs cheap -

but it doesn't burn your full $1700 so maybe:

CLE- IAH- HNL H fare 8/16-8/18

$1,739

total miles 5,008 each way for 15,024 EQMs

Actually do you know if these can be sold or is that illegal? What it is is a $1,620 credit in my travel bank. I know you can't sell miles on ebay but what about this?

MIA-IAH-SJO-IAH-MIA, $805, 5032 miles x 150%. F and BF.

You could offer to buy someone a ticket for, say, a 10% discount (so if you bought someone a $1500 ticket, you would charge them $1350). I don't see why that would be illegal.

Consider driving down to CMH and booking a couple of these back to back.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=844988

CMH-IAH-PDX, CMH-IAH-SEA, CMH-IAH-ONT are all on sale for $260ish round trip. Same day returns are available (redeye or daytime only) so you could go over a weekend and do two of these back to back. You're only burning a fraction of your funds and getting the required 10,000 EQM.

Travel Bank terms and conditions state that:

You can also use a small amount of the balance as partial payment on a ticket. So if you didn't want to cash the whole thing out, you could apply just $10 (or whatever) against the cost of a ticket and pay the balance on that ticket with another form of payment. This would, I believe, reset the clock on the TB account so you have another 2 years before you have to worry about it.

Also, the TB funds are as good as cash to purchase travel on co.com. If you want to buy someone a ticket using your TB funds, I don't think that's in violation of anything. My understanding -- and the T&Cs don't contradict -- is that it's your 'money' that you can use for any legit travel purchase.

All that being said, there are really great fares from CMH in late August, including to ONT (Ontario, CA) which can rack up a decent amount of EQMs. Not really in the MR range in terms of pricing (still ~$0.05/mi) but a very good deal given CO's recent fares.