Hi. after reading the fantastic advice on Flyertalk I'm trying to come up with a plan to get my family of 4 to Europe (anywhere) from YVR (home) or SEA. About me: infrequent flyer (5-6 leisure flights/year), 40K Aeroplan points in my account, rest of family 10K each. Plan: in 3 years want to fly all of us in the front of the plane with a couple of stop overs and open-jaw. Are my assumptions correct:

1) SEA departure (instead of YVR) with UA due to huge savings on fees ($300 per ticket vs. $800)
2) Will need to accumulate about 400K miles, and all in my account is ok?
3) Currently Have no AP CC - should sign up for an AMEX, Canadian AP CC and SPG card NOW to grab the bonuses and start accumulating AP miles?
4) AC/UA/Star Alliance is my best bet to do this?
5) Current CCs - Alaska, Capital One MC

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

If you live in Canada, you will be severely handicapped by the much worse signup bonuses for cards in Canada.

I am very much not an expert on redemptions, but I'm not sure that UA offers a stopver in each direction plus an open jaw. AC might but as you observed, fees on AC are much higher.

Yes, all the points can be in your account, and in fact should be, since your family members won't come close to having enough points to do anything useful.

It would help to know what your typical CC monthly spend is.

Air Canada often runs transfer promotions. They are not incredibly rich, but for example, you can exchange 100K Amex points for 120-125K AP points. They usually come up at the end of the year. They also have periodic other types of promotions. They had one a few months ago where you could get 16,500 bonus miles basically by going to Sobey's and Esso. (Lots of people were going to Esso every day and buying $3 worth of gas at a time.) Right now they have a hotel transfer promo. So you might also consider getting one or more hotel cards that allow transfers to AP. If perchance you had a Marriott card right now with the 70K signup bonus, you could have converted that to AP for 25K + 5K (I think) bonus.

If you can get USA cards, it's worthwhile to get the UA explorer and Chase Sapphire Preferred; Chase points can be converted to United. You could easily run up 100K points on UA and get one ticket from that. Note that there are tricks to getting the best signup bonus on the Explorer card. (Have at least 1UA point in your account and be logged into your United account, then look for the link.)

Finally, don't assume that just because you have 400K points on *A that you will be able to find four award seats on the same flight, even if you do so 11 months in advance.

You may wish to begin here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...uld-i-get.html

Thanks. My monthly CC spend is $5000 and my credit score is good.

Yes, my concern would be that after 3 years having 400k miles but not being able to secure 4 seats. I would apply this "plan" to whichever airline gave me the best shot (i.e. - BA, Virgin, Star Alliance, etc.)

In my research I believe that a UA reward ticket does allow a stop over or 2 and an open jaw.

One stopover and 2 open jaws, round trip awards only.

It's pretty much impossible to predict award availability on a particular carrier/alliance 3 years from now. If you had asked 18 months ago, there would have been no YQ on most AP partners.

I think *A is probably your best bet, but nothing is certain. This is especially true since you will be accruing some miles on your own flights, and just in general, it's easier to can AP miles if you are in Canada. I'm pretty familiar with cross-border issues (I live in the USA, Mrs. Redtop lives in Canada) and getting miles in Canada is a LOT harder than in the lower 48.

Hello. If you obtain several Alaska Airlines credit cards you will receive 25,000 points plus if you obtain a business Alaska Airlines credit card you can receive another 20,000 miles. That is 45000 miles for each adult that qualifies.

Use 40,000 miles on their partner airline American Airlines and fly between October 15 - March 15. Check Americans route map as to whether your destination is included. We flew to Rome last October 18th the the weather was beautiful and it cost us 80,000 Alaska Airlines miles. You should be able to apply for an additional card after 1 year and receive an additional bonus.

Thanks. I have one Alaska Card already but that idea is good.

redtop43 - thanks for your help.

Is this card available in Canada?

I don't think it is. As you're probably aware, our CC signup bonuses are small and yearly fees high. For instance, SPG is at a 30,000 sign and spend but in Canada it is 10,000. Sigh.