Help plan Europe over summer
 

I intend to visit Europe this summer (10-14 days) from DFW. I would appreciate any help/pointers in that direction. We are family of 3 including me. I would like to visit London, Brussels, Luxembourg, Paris, Zurich and Rome. Either north to south or south2north. These are my miles

Mine / Wife's

AA - 120,000 / 110,000
United - 20,000 / 110,000
BA - 170,000 / 60,000
SW - 110,000 with companion pass
UR - 60,000
US - 36,000
Hilton - 55,000 / 51,000
Marriott - 70,000
Amex SPG - 90,000
Barclays Arrival - 50,000

If possible I want to save AA miles for future trip to India and wnat to utilize BA and SW wherever I could.

I intend to fly coach to save miles. Would like to go during June July or Aug. you do not have to look for availability, I could do that if I know which airports should I look for where do I start.

Is it possible to get hotels with Hilton and Marriott points above. I do not want to pay for hotel. Is there another card that I could get whose points would be helpful in booking hotels for this trip?

I suggest that you want to start with United, given that you want to save your AA miles for future travel. Should you find availability, your UR points can then be moved into a UA account. They usually transfer with near immediacy.

You don't want to use your BA miles because BA charges a heavy surcharge that is almost as much as a coach fare.

Southwest does not have European fights.

US requires that a RT be booked. I haven't looked up their award chart, but I believe that international coach RT is more than 36K.

You want to identify UA's international routes and look for availability on them. At a start, UA flies into LHR, FRA, MUC, AMS, BRU. It's pretty easy to look at their award availability chart. You can easily check for 3 seats on their city pairs. United shows a month at a glance, so it is quite easy to scroll thru the months of interest to you.

UA charges 30K plus tax for a one way coach ticket to Europe. You can move 10K UR points into your account, giving you 30K, enough for a one way ticket for one. You move the rest into your wife's account, giving her enough for the other 5 one way tickets.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into United soon.

Right now, I am looking at AA flights and noticed that off-peak/peak cut-off date is May 15th. I am flexible with my plans. I could even go in April/May. But I noticed, while not using BA flights, with AA miles, the surcharges are still high: around $150-$200 for a RT.

If I want to use AA miles and avoid high surcharges, what are my options? Thanks.

Seems like you are trying to do way to much. I'd consider flying to LHR - train to BRU/PAR - fly to Rome and return from there. Doable on both AA and UA.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

As long as you avoid BA and IB flights when you redeem AA miles, you won't pay a penny in surcharges. You will still, however, have to pay taxes and airport fees, which can vary considerably from country to country.

BA Avios can be very good for "Reward Flight Saver" redemptions on short-haul flights into or out of the U.K.

Avios can also be redeemed for travel on Air Berlin with no surcharges.

United looks like the best bet for you.

My advice would be to fly a route like this:

DFW-EWR-FCO on UA
Stopover
FCO-ZRH on LX
Take trains from Zurich to London
LHR-DUB-ORD-DFW on EI and UA

Flying LHR-DUB-US instead of LHR-US will let you avoid the high APD fees at Heathrow.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Or fly ZRH-LON-BHD on BA, using Reward Flight Savers, which will include a free stopover in London en route to Northern Ireland. Then get from Belfast to Dublin via one-way car rental or public transport.

That sounds like an itinerary flying out of London. UK and LHR departure taxes are around $200, no surcharges involved. To cut those out, fly into London and out of anywhere else, and your departure taxes will be around $40-60.

We did this trip last year (similar) and flew from Chicago/Rome on the way there (using AA miles on Iberia). Flight was great.

Used BA miles to get from Rome to London (stop) then onto Dublin. Flew Dublin to Chicago using AA miles.

Based out of Omaha so used SW miles to get from Omaha to Chicago both ways.

I know you said you didn't want to use AA miles but that's my only experience (that an BA). No knowledge of the rules/routing for UA. We had Hilton honors points for our hotel stays (Rome Cav and Waldorf London). Take the train to some of those places.

Good luck!

Wow, that's a lot for 2 weeks. As others have said, United is best. You can avoid the high fuel surcharges associated with BA Avios if you can find availability on Air Berlin (searchable on aa.com but you'll have to call BA to book). The downside is they only fly to select U.S. cities (LAX,JFK,ORD,MIA,RSW), and from there to Germany (mostly DUS and TXL). So you'd have to fly from DFW to one of those cities, then to Germany, then from Germany to your European destination. So that's two connections, minimum. So United is the best option.

Also, as you saw, flying back from London will always have a moderate surcharge (~$150-$200). For that reason, I would recommend flying to London first, working your way south, then flying back from Rome.

As you inquire, you will likely get comments from some who prefer to travel at a slower pace (which is great for them) but your plan sounds good to me. We did a trip of similar scope in November which I wrote about here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...tr-w-pics.html and had a great time. If you want to put your companion pass to work and use the minimum amount of Avios, you can call BA and ask for availability BOS-DUB-London on Aer Lingus and use WN for DAL-BOS. However there are DF-ORD-LHR or DFW-RDU-LHR options on several days in early May which would be far easier and more efficient at only 20K miles per person.

Try looking at using AA miles to LHR on 5/4, 5/7 or 5/12 and UA miles for the return.
Edit: The LH FRA-DFW flight has 3 award seats nearly every day in May, and there are many UA and AC options as well returning from ZRH or MXP with taxes of $50-$90 per person. FCO has less available dates but is also possible.

Also, none of these places are very far apart. Your best routing within Europe could be London-Brussels-Lux-Paris-Rome all by rail then an AB flight booked with Avios to ZRH and return from there. Being flexible and creative can help stretch your miles.

I'll take a crack at the hotel part of your question. If you don't want to pay for hotel and you're planning to travel for 2 weeks, you need to earn more hotel points, full stop. The hotels in these cities require a lot of points and you don't have that many. If you don't use UR points by transferring to airlines, you can transfer them to hotels.

I'd also recommend signing up for the Chase IHG Rewards Club Visa and another Hilton card or 2. The Citi Reserve comes with 2 certificates good at any Hilton property and gold status.

You might also consider booking Points + Cash stays - it will be a lot less than an all cash or all points stay and both Hilton and IHG offer this option at many of their properties. IHG also has a quarterly "points break" list of hotels where you can book a room for only 5000 points/night. Here is the current list available until 3/31.

The other thing I like about these 2 chains is that they include breakfast if you have a certain status level (achieved with the credit cards). The buffets may not be amazing, but a free breakfast certainly helps to reduce your costs.

Thanks alot everyone. Every response was helpful and gave me some perspective. First I will try to accumulate more HHonors.

I will spend more this week and follow your advice of flying to LHR and fly back using UA and use train or AB within Europe.

Kenny, your travel report was very intersting and useful. thanks for sharing.