do not know where to post. please move

i have quite a few miles(enough for a couple dozen trips) and no status .i would like to use them to procure saver first class tickets from iad to france, italy, and other central and western european cities. a lot of the miles are flexible(starwood points). do not have to fly direct.

what airlines do i look at, what seasons. need 2 tickets, can schedule last minute, or way out. would like to get to BOD and TLS, sicily, calabria, mxp and the like. travel over christmas, thanksgiving is fine. could just go to CDG and drive

What are your point balances and with who?

some airlines let you look at availability on their sites [aa,ua,dl,etc].....

mid jan-mid mar is often shows decent availability.....

if you want summer 2012, get with it!.....good luck...

ps....any preferred departure airport?....

out of iad for direct, dca or bwi for other starts.

i have about a million starwood points, which=1.2 or 1.25mm airline miles. close to a million LH, a hundred thousand or so with BA,AA,Delta,CO,US and i have probably lost 2 mil from neglect.

Are you posting on someone else's account? Just find it curious that someone who has posted 6,000+ times in 11 years on FT isn't sure where to place a post and is also suddenly asking how to use miles to Europe. Not accusing you of anything, just curious. And that's a whole lot of miles you've got saved up there. You shouldn't have any problem going anywhere you want in any class you want for many trips to come. Congrats.

1.in my 11 years, i learned to do a search. i could not find a similar question.
2.i have flown to europe with my wife in biz class about 30-40-50 times. always on a company(my company)dime.[note, it was cheaper for me to fly us over, pick up mdse for the company and fly it back as luggage than to air freight the stuff.]
3. i charged hundreds of thousands of dollars of company money on credit cards.
4. i did spend a lot of points on high end starwood hotels, and i do know how to do that.

the only two times i recall i used points to fly was once in first to Hawaii, and ended up in the back of the plane...both ways, and once from BLQ to iad, where we got thrown off the plane in muc.

That's very impressive.. congrats!

ah, no wonder you've got so many miles. Nice job if you can get it. (Any openings?) You're going to have to do a lot of first class travel to get rid of all those miles. Another nice job if you can get it!

Although you've got a ton of points/miles in your storehouse, I'd do a little more research on how you might be able to revive any points/miles that have lapsed. Might as well have as big a bundle to play with as you can, especially because you want to fly first class!

You're fortunate. You've got many options, especially since you have a good stash of Starpoints which may be redeemed with a number of partners and which provide access to some nice high-end resort properties in Europe. Even with the programs where you have relatively few miles, many will allow you to book one-way awards so you could fly BA one way and AA back (and lots of other combinations as well).

I'd be tempted to plan my trips around LH and *A partner awards while staying in SPG properties. Use your other airline programs (and supplement with Starpoint conversions) as necessary to meet any scheduling/destination needs.

All of us would be happy to have your type of questions!

Back to your question. You will have NO problem if you plan ahead and it seems you are looking at Nove-Dec 2012 - right? For 2011 it could be dicey.

What we all need to help is:
1. Departing airport - IAD, right?

2. Destination(s) - are you talking about arriving and returning from the same airport or an "open-jaw" where you land at one and depart from another

3. Preferred dates of travel and range of dates if flexible.

Some of us "addicts" find the hunt to actually be exciting and I can promise a few people will come back with specifics once we know the details.

As an aside, you and your wife should sit down and come up with a list of places you want to go and when you want to go there. Saver awards are not hard to get but you do have to plan in advance. And you need to understand that most of us are okay with non-stop flights - I'm going to Paris in December and returning from Brussels with my wife. Going FC on Lufthansa which means stopping in Frankfurt and returning non-stop on United - the latter doesn't happen often. For some of us, the flight is not just the way to get there but a nice part of the entire experience. That said, I have friends who would rather pay to fly non-stop to Europe in Coach than go on miles in the front of the plane.

don't we all. guess we need smarter friends.

If you have no status with LH and you don't have their (available in Germany only) credit card, your LH will expire after 3 years (and no way to avoid that), as I understand it.

All the other airlines and hotel programs you mentioned, you can extend miles expiration by any "activity". With most of the other airlines, you can buy a cup of coffee or a sandwich at a 'participating Dining program establishment once or twice a year and that extends the miles each time. One or two don't have a dining program, but just credit the odd hotel stay or rental to them once a year and that takes care of that.

So I would prioritize on using the LH miles first whenever at all possible, or else those will evaporate as well before you know it.

Only worry about other airlines once you've used up your LH miles (and enver collect them again, you can always credit to CO or UA or US when flying LH or most of its partners). For now, only worry about doing periodic "activity" on each of your other ailrines / hotel programs, and keep track of the expiration of each.

(None of the other ailrines you mention need status to keep miles from expiring. Only LH does. That's why collecting with a European or Asian airline program may not be a good idea if you don't have a plan to use the miles you earn quickly.)

my wife and i each have a Barklay bank mastercard M&M card. (LH killed the visa card) we get mileage credits and no experation of mileage. i do not know if we have to put miles on, and i do not know if we were grandfathered into this program. some of these miles are very old(least 10 years).