I can see from reading that the members here have high level flying experience. I need some wisdom from y'all please. Here are the facts:
1. I have saved NW/Delta FF miles for about 6 years (mostly from CC ) to make a trip from Pensacola (PNS) to Madrid(MAD) and back. I have 120,000 skymiles. We could drive or fly on separate ticket to ATL which will be the international departure spot.
2. I want desperately to do the overseas part in Business Class, not coach.
3. Trip is planned for Sept or Oct, I am flexible, need about 2 weeks duration.
4. 2 Adults
5.Before merger w/ NW, I could have bought a reasonably priced coach ticket and used my miles for upgrade. Now cheapest coach ticket that allows upgrade is about 3 grand each. Coach for same flights is about $800.
6. AA is currently offering same flights for under $400 roundtrip coach. Upgrade is available w/ AA miles plus $700 each person RT.
7. Looks like to use a site like Points.com would cost me about $1000 to change Skymiles to AA miles.

Anyone w/ any ideas on ways I could use my Skymiles (120,000) to obtain reasonably priced tickets at Biz Class or upgrade to Biz please advise me.
Thanks in advance, Lundy

Biz class for 2 at 120K? That's just not possible. It's 100K for BE per person, and that's if you find availability.

And to upgrade, as you know, you need an M+ fare.

The cheapest AA flights found by ITA Software PNS-MAD round trip, for a journey of 12-14 days departing 9/1/10-10/17/10, are priced at $816/person. If AA can confirm mileage + copay upgrades for two both ways at time of purchase you should take it.

What I want to know is there a way to use Skymiles thru a partner airlines to get a better deal on a pay + miles upgrade than Delta offers ?
Or is there a good way to change Skymiles to AA miles that costs less than $1000 ?
I know I cant get two tickets on my miles, but hoped to use them for upgrade. If I bought upgradable coach tickets from Delta it would cost close to $3000 each.

At $3000 each it's likely cheaper for you to redeem on J award and then buy a matching paid J trip.

very sorry, you're out of luck!

welcome to Delta -- not a chance to get an Int'l Business Class ticket for 120k; I just spent 135k per ticket for two First Class tickets to Hawaii ...

sorry ... no way to make it happen

FWIW, Northwest was more restrictive as to what fares you could upgrade (only Y or B.) As I recall, it was about $2,900 for an upgradable fare BDL-AMS-FCO.

Before paying a lot to transfer miles, I would investigate the possibilities for purchasing some miles. Do you have any credit card miles or points that could be used?

Your own information (corrected for the price of AA coach) clearly says that DL would cost more in total ($6K for 2 x M versus $4K, calculated as 2 x ($800 fare + $700 copay) plus $1000 to move miles). Many wouldn't consider this to be a good use of miles and money.

However, have you looked at discounted business class fares on all airlines? Depending on dates and availability, you might be able to find something for around $2K per person RT. Would you be willing to instead fly in economy plus if it's available for most of your route? Or how about, depending on the seating configuration, purchasing three cheap coach seats for the two of you or paying to reserve special exit row or whatever seats (i.e., KLM). You could use the money you save to purchase stuff like drinks on board if necessary, airport lounge access, and gourmet meals to go onto your flight, for example, as take-out from a fancy airport outlet.

If you're creative and do a bit of research, you should be able to put together your own a la carte almost business class package for much less than the prices you're facing. Figure out what matters to you and how you want to spend your travel money and miles. Would you rather stay in a nice hotel and eat well than give money to an airline for an experience that is likely to last less than 24 hours in total? Remember, too, that if you don't use your DL miles now, you can use them for hotels, gift cards, domestic flights, etc. but don't let them expire or be devalued even more over time.

As always a thoughtful post by MSPeconomist. Truly one of the best posters on this forum.

And...this is complete garbage. If you look in the redemption success thread you will see that regularly, people are spending 100K/120K for Biz awards to Europe and Asia regularly...creativity is your friend.

Good luck, and enjoy your trip!

If you can't find a seat on DL, it may be worth a call to SkyMiles and ask about availability on Air Europa. They fly MIA-MAD and JFK-MAD. Those are options that won't show up on the online search. Air Europa is pricing about in the low-mid $2K range to paid J.

Here's a picture of the cabin on the A300.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Air-E...202/1066448/M/

I used to by B-Fares on NW LAX-DTW-FRA for $1100 - $1400. Would then upgrade with 60K miles. Cheap coach seats where $500-800 by comparison.

Corrrect on the Y or B fares, but they were MUCH cheaper than the current M.
For example, $1800 in B BDL-AMS-BUD last year for mileage upgrades in June (60K miles per ticket)

Yes! Many times yes!

And, as now, PMNW required more miles to upgrade from the relatively cheaper fares, but in contrast PMNW offered more upgrade inventory from the full Y fares. I always liked the system--it seemed fair to me--and was willing to pay the price differential or try to adjust my travel dates to get into WBC, even though you weren't allowed to upgrade further into international FC from an upgrade. This rule sometimes caused me to decide to buy WBC as I might then get into FC TPAC, which was a real treat, although I could never expect to be reimbursed for undiscounted FC fares and I would have been embarrassed to ask.

More recently, I've been resentfully buying M+ and upgrading so far, but when I begin to find that such high fares violate reimbursement rules or otherwise cause issues including during IROPs, then I might as well begin to compare fares and service across all carriers. At that point, I'm pretty sure that DL will not be the winner, either for paid BE, upgraded BE, or coach. I suspect the choice will be between a reasonable but not deep discount fare, possibly upgraded with or without a copay, premium economy (i.e., United), or deeply discounted business on any available carrier. In fact, I've been starting to look at UA/LH/LX, CO, and even AA as well as some of the good Asian carriers through other alliances.

I sometimes wonder how many of the upgraded business travelers have really paid for published M fares versus those who get a much lower corporate-contracted rate that is closer to fare classes that cannot normally be upgraded. I've also been noticing that certain cities seem to have significantly lower prices for TATL and TPAC M fares than the M+ fares I face ex-MSP.

A really odd thing is that I really did see under $400 fares for the US to Madrid round trip earlier this week. I showed them to a co-worker and we verified it was round trip. They showed up on 2 different days, many options for something like $369 and $398....now only the $800-$900 fares...is this common. Is it likely the lower fares will return ?
I thought I was out far enough in advance to have a few days to make up my mind. I suppose not. Does the Delta airlines website log my IP address and show different people different fares ?