Looking for tools and strategy for my points situation
 

I’d appreciate some guidance and advice from someone with more experience with award travel than me.

I’ve booked a cruise for June-July 2027 that sails from and returns to Dover, England so I want round-trip Business Class trans-Atlantic tickets for myself and my wife from the U.S. to LHR or LGW. My nearest airport to my home is CVG. I’m looking for ways to maximize the value of my various miles and points, realizing that I may not have enough to cover the entire trip with points. I also realize that I may have to book positioning flights to/from my gateway cities.

I have Aeroplan (114K); Delta (100K); AmEx (170K) and Chase UR (25K).

I’m stuck on figuring out how to eat this elephant. What’s a good approach?

What have you found when looking, even though cannot book awards until 330 ~350 days out (depending in ffp)?
Have you looked at cost in ff miles of 2 RT business class awards CVG-UK? You have low ~ very low balances.
Using ff miles/points to supplement cash is generally poor value.

I would be looking for cash business class fares. Or maybe premium economy. You are wanting to travel at a peak time.
Wikipedia CVG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincin...tional_Airport
BA fly CVG-LHR non stop. DL fly CVG-CDG non stop. The CDG to Dover by train.

Amex MR -- https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...l-program.html
Chase UR -- https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chas...17-2026-a.html

Grand_Tour_18 , have you inquired of the cruise line as to whether it is offering any discounted Business Class fares for passengers?

As Mwenenzi mentioned, your balance is quite low for two business class award tickets.

looking at your account balances, I think one option you could explore is Air Canada. Log into your AC account and see what kind of points you need for your routing this summer to get an idea of points needed,

AC +AMEX MR transfer will give you 284K points. Looking at AC award charts, thats should be good for at least 1 business class seat with some left over points. You can look at purchasing more points (AC seems to have point sales every so often) or use CC bonus to collect more miles. Or just buy the other ticket on cash.

Another option worth exploring is purchasing economy or premium economy tickets and upgrading via points. Dont know about AC specifically but there is a Star Alliance points based upgrade option that you might be able to utilize (there are some rules around carriers, flight numbers and always space dependent so not guaranteed…)

In addition to the strategies suggested in this thread, consider the idea of purchasing one-way business class tickets for the two of you with points for the trip to the UK and using points or cash to buy return premium economy or even economy for the trip back to the US. I generally follow this strategy in my own travel because I find myself more rested on the overnight flight to the UK, thus justifying the extra expense, but willing to accept an upright seat in premium economy or even economy for the day flight back.

One way tickets can be somewhat problematic in US Europe markets because there is often a RT discount and Europe origins are more expensive than US origins. This is all stuff you can figure out in advance.