thewhitezone

Possible trip to Italy in July for 3 people. I'd like to be able to do it in business class. Wondering if there's any hope of finding saver level availability. My points are mostly consolidated in oneworld (215k AA and 190k US) Also have about 200k UR points and 50k MR points and about 80k BA avios.

I'd like to widen my odds by looking at other possible cities to fly from JFK (using the AA, US or UR points) and then Avios or MR points, or possibly even revenue tickets within Europe to get to Italy. Haven't had much luck searching so far, but I haven't looked at Europe availability much at all in the past few years so not sure whether I'm just not using the right tricks to expedite my searching. Have I not yet found the right gateway city or is award availability just that difficult to find for business class in July. If it's the former, what cities might offer a better array of options? If the latter, is there any predictability to how far our award space may tend to become available.

I am also not averse to topping up some accounts by, say, signing up for a new United cc to earn 30k or so miles, or etc.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Finding 3 Business SAAver seats from anywhere in the U.S. to anywhere in Europe in July on the same flights with AA miles is going to prove quite challenging, if not impossible. Not sure if using UA miles will be any better, but you can try. Note that both AAdvantage and Mileage plus offer one-way awards. @:-)

You can see a list of all airlines and their nonstop destinations from JFK by Googling "JFK airport wiki". (Will also work for EWR, BOS, etc.)

mikelat

July is peak travel to Europe. Even booking way in advance, 3 J seats on the same flights are going to be tough. Booking this close in, I don't think you're going to find anything. I'd contact an award booking service and see what they can do for you.

thewhitezone

I know it's a longshot. The opportunity to take the trip just popped up (and may yet fizzle.) I don't mind doing the searches daily if there's a decent shot that things will pop up here or there but if it's such a longshot that there's single-digit probability at best, that time would be better spent monitoring airfares instead. There's only so many hours in the day available for searches.

dukerau

How much have you searched?

7/7 - 3 J seats JFK-LHR-FCO on AA/BA, 50K AA + $103 per person
same on 7/6
same on 7/14 (but with all-day layover in LHR)

7/2 - 3 J seats on EWR-BRU-FCO on UA/SN, 57.5K UA + $?? (won't be too much)
same on 7/21
could fly into VCE, FLR, MXP, or NAP instead on 7/2 itinerary
could fly into VCE, FLR, or MXP instead on 7/21 intinerary
must call to book this as BRU-Italy is on SN and won't show up on united.com


It's tougher to find the returns in J - I've never understood this as I'd rather do economy for Europe-US than on US-Europe. But such is the case. I did see one opportunity:
7/16 - 3 J seats on (FCO/MXP/NAP)-MUC-CLT or VCE-FRA-MUC-CLT on LH, 57.5K UA + ~$70 each, arrives in CLT at 4:20p
+
3 Y seats on any of these for 4.5K Avios per person:
CLT-LGA at 6:30p or 8:20p
CLT-JFK at 7:55p
(I'd go with the 8:20p to leave a buffer)

So options aren't plentiful, but even with the sparse selection I laid out, you can piece together a two week itinerary, 7/2-7/16, all in J except for the final CLT-NYC flight, and all on saver rates.

ETA: Just realized you don't have enough UR points for 3x round trips in J. You could do one of the UA/SN flights with Amex MR (transfer to Aeroplan, 45K one way in J), and then you'd need 287.5K UA to book the other 5 one-ways. If you're willing to split up, you may have more success. There is spotty availability on the IB MAD-JFK flight in J in July, so one or two doing Italy-MAD-JFK and one or two doing *A may open up more options. Or you do have enough miles to do the 7/7 flights with AA miles and the 7/16 returns with UA miles - if that's the length of trip you were thinking.

farbster

You might consider coach. From NY to Europe isn't that bad...maybe you can get something and upgrade to Econ plus or whatever each airline would call it?

thewhitezone

Thanks. I found a bunch of dates for AA in July with connection through LHR, but I didn't find any routes that weren't entirely on BA metal, so the fuel charges. Maybe I didn't search those outbound dates or else it wasn't there last night(?) But good to know.

There's some really good options here. Thanks for the help. As for how much I've searched. Not a lot. The potential for the trip just popped up and so I'm just wading into it. Tips like yours will help me save some time. I know how to search for the things I usually search for but I'm widening the scope here. I usually fly one world so knowing all the ins and outs of the other alliances and where best to transfer UR points etc is still a new undertaking for me. Like I've read that UR to Korean Air may be an option for redeeming for Emirates flights into Milan. But I've never had occasion to even create accounts for those two airlines' programs yet. So a lot of this is learn as I go for things I've been reading about in theory but never having opportunity to put into practice.

dukerau

Yes, using KE miles for JFK-MXP on EK is an option, but business is 125k RT, and Korean requires RT awards on partners. So you only have enough UR for 1 RT on that route.

In terms of searching, AA handles all US-Europe oneworld flights except Iberia - use a paid service or iberia.com to search IB.

For *A, united.com shows all US-Europe options except SN (Brussels Airlines) and SQ (Singapore). SQ flies JFK-FRA, so it is relevant for your travel. You can use aeroplan.com or ANA to search for SN and SQ availability. I didn't see any J availability on SQ's JFK-FRA for your dates. How to use ANA search without any ANA miles. A few notes on *A searching in general:

• United's summary calendar is not accurate. Sometimes it will show yellow for a date (economy only) and there is J/F available. Sometimes it will show white (no saver availability) and there is Y/J/F available (usually Y).
• Aeroplan shows all partners, but they have been showing a large amount of phantom availability on Austrian lately. Also, their availability calendar for business/first shows yellow (availability) even when the TATL segment is in economy (intra-Europe segments in J/F). Boo.
• ANA doesn't have an availability calendar, but it is the best in terms of accuracy. I like to use their 7-day availability search, but it only works for direct routes. However, since *A has great availability intra-Europe, I use the direct 7-day search for the TATL route and assume I can make it work after that. For example, I searched JFK-BRU knowing that most of the time BRU-FCO/VCE/MXP is going to be possible.

I use a combination of these three search engines. Usually start with united.com and only expand to ANA if I can't find what I want on united.com.

I'm most novice with SkyTeam, but Delta's search is much improved as of a few months ago. I think it covers all ST members that fly US-Europe.

One final option that's more work but could pay off: Jet Airways flies EWR-BRU and YYZ-BRU. Both AA and UA miles can be used on Jet Airways, but you have to call United/AA about availability. I have never seen/heard of any way to search Jet availability online. But I have read that availability, particularly for YYZ-BRU, is very good. I was thinking that AA wouldn't work well since OW doesn't fly anything BRU-Italy, but I just saw that Iberia (Vueling, actually) flies BRU-FCO, so there is a way to put together an award with AA miles for EWR-BRU-FCO or (vice versa) assuming AA miles can be redeemed on Vueling, which I'm not sure of. Other option is transfer Amex points to Iberia and use 4.5K IB Avios each to book BRU-FCO. Or pay out of pocket (< $100).

MSPeconomist

The new EK JFK-MXP flights seems to be viewed as major competition by other carriers such as DL. There are some good sale/special prices on the DL JFK-MXP RTs in Business Eite. It might be worth considering this versus struggling to use miles. IIRC there's a thread about the DL MXP pricing in the DL forum.