Best card/program for JFK to Europe
 

I've been saving miles to use for business class seats to Europe. I only use miles for this purpose. I have lots of miles with Continental and United but unfortunately they fly out of Newark (and although I flown out of Newark I would rather not). I also have British Airways miles but booking to other than London means connecting flights. I have Amex miles as well and I fly Delta a lot, although I hate their new 72 hours cancellation rule.

My question is what program do I join if I wanted to fly Luftsana or Airfrance with miles?

I have no American airlines miles and I'm thinking of applying for their credit card. Any other ideas for AA miles?

You can use your Delta miles for Air France. Generally their J availability is great from IAD and BOS, haven't checked JFK.

I have flown on American from JFK to Rome, they have a handful of destinations in Europe.

You can find Air France and KLM flights on the Delta website, but only the low award level flights. You'll find Air France Flights to Paris and KLM flights to Amsterdam.

so, can I go to Air France.com, book a flight and use Delta miles? And if I do book using Delta miles, does the 72 hour cancellation rule apply?

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No. If you want to book a partner flight with Delta miles, you must do so either by visiting delta.com, or by calling Delta.

You can use the Flying Blue website (Air France & KLM loyalty program) to research flights; if there is classic award availability, the flight can be booked on Delta (coach for 60,000, business for 100,000, first not available). Or you can search for nonstop flights between JFK and Paris/Amsterday on the Delta website. Either way, flights must be booked through Delta using Delta miles, which is a good thing because it is much cheaper. Flying Blue has high fuel surcharges and taxes on their award tickets.

I want to fly JFK J to CDG April!/may for a 5 day stopover then proceed. To ATH for 2 1/2 month. Could I add a trip to AMS and back to ATH within the 2 months and then back to JFK? I don't care if that is coach

If I can, what would be better DL or AA . I want to spend 100K and ihave 350k in each program .

you can go to delta .com in order to book a flight for you.

you can, although it is well known by the flyertalk community that the delta award search tool is horribly broken.

What would be better is the one who has avaiability, if you aready have the miles with both!

Also, does Delta now allow you to book one-way flights? AA does. So if Delta does too, you could book AA one way and Delta the other way. Thus it's not even necessarily an either/or.

However, AA does not partner with any European airlines that are based at CDG, ATH, AMS, etc. So with AA you'd have to connect through somewhere, Delta's partnership with Air France can get you to/from CDG, and KLM to/from AMS.

Having said all that, no, you cannot add back-and-forth intra-Europe flights on the same 100k award (or two 50Ks if one way) that you use to get from JFK to Europe and back. You either need to book extra trips running around Europe in the middle of your visit separately.

AA will not let you add stopovers in Europe at all (beyond 24 hours), only at your North American gateway (which does you no good if you're flying east from JFK, of course!). Dunno about Delta, but I doubt they let you do more than one, if any at all.

Delta allows one stopover and one open jaw. They charge the same for a one-way that they do for a round trip; except that flights originating in Europe will pay a couple hundred more in taxes. On Delta you could book JFK-CDG stopover CDG-ATH destination/open jaw AMS-JFK. You would then have to book a separate one-way from Athens to Amsterdam.

AA allows one way bookings, but only allows a stopover in the gateway US city (usually Chicago or New York). You could do an open jaw with American; fly JFK-CDG (open jaw) then ATH-JFK.

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For 115K AA miles, you could get a oneworld award with an itinerary like the following in Business Class, if award seats were available:

Jfk-cdg, ory-mad-ath-bud-ams-bud-skg, ath-mad-jfk

Since oneworld awards do not permit you to stop over more than once in a city, but do permit one open jaw on the itinerary, you would fly AMS-SKG, and have to make your way from SKG to ATH at your own expense.

I think my wife would die if I tried dragging her through all those airports. LOL

Let's try a simpler trip , and I will see about ATH AMS using one of the good consolidators we have here in ATH where I am at the moment.

Let's just say JFK CDG with 5 day stopover in Paris the onto ATH mid April early may depending on PH PARIS. VENDOMME availability , and then back ATH to JFK or EWr for that matter late june early July

DL has a nonstop ATH JFK daily but i doubt i could get low tier J but I wouldn't mind a 1 stop return if i had to , if I could get all that for around 100k + taxes without any YQ.

Then I have to get my wife from ATH to CDG and hopefully we can return CDG same flight or roughly same time time to ATH

Thanks for your help

CAN I get J DL JFK CDG then stopover 4 -5 days proceed to ATH stay 2 months and then ATH JFK Direct flight return for 100k plus fees?

Then I can pay for a ticket or use CO Miles for her RT ATH CDG coach

Yes, that itinerary would price out at 100k plus fees at the lowest award level. But I have not researched those specific routes and can't vouch for availability. Sometimes Athens can be a seasonal destination from the US (there might not be direct flights during the winter or there might not be a direct flight every day of the week).