Many thanks for all the advice from the folks on FlyerTalk! You provide an invaluable service! With all the credit card offers, I'm trying to decide which would be the most useful for our flying needs. Typically, we take one long (international) flight a year (or every other year) and a couple of domestic ones. We live in Seattle and have had great luck using our Alaska ff miles to fly to Hawaii or Mexico. However, trying to use their partner airlines to get us to Europe every other summer is almost impossible. (My wife is a teacher so we have to go in the summer.)
I've checked into using Starwood amex since its available on multiple airlines but the number of points (miles) required for a summer flight to Europe is ridiculous (175,000 points from Seattle to Rome!)
Can anyone recommend which airlines ff program might best serve our needs?

I'm sure other people will have better solutions from Seattle (AA probably), but don't discount the SPG. If you book early enough, the summer should not be that high. Also, if you're having problems with availability from Seattle, consider purchasing a cheap ticket to a gateway city on the East Coast. If time isn't an issue (with your wife being a teacher), maybe buy a cheap ticket to Boston/Chicago/New York or DC, enjoy a few days there before/after your trip. That may not be ideal, but if you're open to that option, you'll greatly expand your options.

To get specific recommendations, you may want to also provide information such as:
1) preferred class (Y, J, F)?
2) willingness to pay higher surcharges in exchange for flexibility?
3) existing cards
4) number of cards you're willing to apply for/carry
5) any travel that you currently do/any significant balances in existing FF programs

Sounds as though OP doesn't really understand that SPG points can be transferred (usually) with a bonus to many airline programs, notably, AA.

Then, use the AA or whatever miles to fly on AA or partner airlines. The 175K to Europe seems very high. Can likely be done for much less. Looking at the AA award chart http://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/f...ward-chart.jsp it looks as though one could go from US to Rome for 40-60K AA miles in coach or for 125K in biz or F.

By the way, IMHO, availability often opens up a week or two before departure date.

Answers to your 5 questions:
1)We would prefer coach class -- don't think we can accumulate enough points for first class, at least not in the near future.

2)Not sure I understand the significance of this question. I suppose I'd be willing to pay the surcharges if it pencils out to save money -- the bottom line is what it's all about.

3)Current Cards: --- We have just started acquiring new cards -- We're new at this game. For years,all we have used is the BOA Alaska Visa and it has served us well for their own flights (poorly for their partners). About a month ago we applied and received 4 Citi AA cards at 50k each (Visa & Amex for both myself and my wife.

4) We are willing to apply for as many cards as our credit will allow us to in order to get the bonuses. We put everything on cc, usually $5000-$7000/month, so it won't take us long to meet the minimum spending needing for most cards.

5) Our current goal is to get two tickets to Italy for next summer. We are frantically trying to meet our AA requirements on the 4 new Citi AA cards so we have the miles necessary to search through them. I think we will have them by Dec 1. -- we have about 180,000 miles with Alaska.

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

An AAnytime Coach award between the U.S. and Europe costs 60,000 AA miles each way, so 120,000 miles roundtrip. As long as there are Coach seats available for sale, you can get AAnytime awards.

If you are lucky enough to find MileSAAver/Partner awards to Europe for summer travel, they will cost 30,000 AA miles each way.

Based on your monthly spend, it probably makes sense to get an SPG Amex to continue building up your stash of AA miles, after you have met the spend requirements for the bonuses on your Citi/AA cards. SPG points transfer to AAdvantage miles at the rate of 20,000 points to 25,000 AA miles.

They also transfer to US Airways at the same ratio, which allows you to tap into Starnet inventory across the pond- Lufthansa, Continental etc all have pretty good availability transatlantically

First, let's be clear: nobody PREFERS coach. We are simply forced to accept it as the best alternative under certain circumstances

For the immediate goal: have you called Alaska to make sure that there are no low tier awards? I can't speak for Alaska, but with AA and Delta I've sometimes found calling reveals options that are not available on-line. Also, as you get close to the spend on AA, start searching and put your itinerary on hold if you find availability.

For the longer term:
1) Ignore BA--they have high surcharges, which for some people is fine for premium cabin redemptions
2) After you finish with the AA, I'd recommend two additional cards:
-AmEx SPG: you can transfer in increments of 20k to get 25k miles for many airlines (including AA). In addition, you can get some nice hotel stays. The challenge is that they have small sign up bonuses (25-30k), and very few promotions.
-AmEx MR card -whatever flavor offers the best sign up. The Platinum card has a hefty fee ($450), but research it to see if the perks ($200 airline credit, etc) would make it worthwhile. Otherwise, just watch for the flavor of the months sign up bonus. MR transfer to many airlines, but not AA.
3) Start building your cache in one of two ways:
-identify your target destinations, and then figure out which alliance offers the best options (cost/schedule/availability to get there). Then, direct your spend accordingly on the SPG/MR/and perhaps an airline specific card.
-identify your best redemption offers (cost/schedule/availability and sign-up bonuses), if you're pretty flexible.

The key is really research what you want, and what will work for you. You'll want to begin building a portfolio based on your spend/bonuses/redemption value. I haven't even touched on cash/travel rewards card.

You're absolutely right! No one except a masochist would choose coach. It's strictly the only practical way for most of us.
I really appreciate your suggestions. However I'm confused about exactly how the SPG process works. Can you spell out the step-by-step process a person would go through in order to redeem award travel from them?
In other words, let's say I have over 60,000 points which is generally enough for one saver(?) round trip ticket to Europe. Do I have to first transfer my points to a given airline like American and THEN search through American for a free flight? Or can I search for availability on a variety of airlines and then transfer the points to that airline? If its the former, then I don't see much advantage to using SPG. Hope you can clear this up for me.
Thanks!
Bob

All the low rewards Seattle to Rome are gone for next summer. I did find 2 seats Milan to Seattle on August 23rd for 30k each. If you have enough miles, you could book those return flights today, and book Seattle to Rome for 60k each (availability is wide open for 60k) when you finish earning the miles. This would cost a total of 90k points each. That's the nice thing about one way awards. Remember, you can hold tickets, and you have 24 hours to cancel a redemption without penalty. I would book hold those seats on August 23rd immediately and then talk it over with your spouse.

Otherwise, getting SPG cards will help earn more AA miles, but by the time you finish earning them, you'll be stuck paying 120,000 miles each.

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

"Do I have to first transfer my points to a given airline like American and THEN search through American for a free flight? Or can I search for availability on a variety of airlines and then transfer the points to that airline?"

Anyone -- even those without an AAdvantage account -- can search for award availability on AA metal at aa.com. If you have an AAdvantage account and see availability, you can place the award "on hold" for five days, and then initiate a transfer of SPG points to AAdvantage. Unfortunately, such transfers might not always occur within five days of requesting one.

If your award travel using AA miles involves even one flight on a partner carrier, you would have to call AA to search for and book such an award (unless you wanted to use some other online engine to search for award availability on AA partners); AA would again hold your award reservation for five days.

The best way to use SPG points for travel is to transfer them to miles. When you choose to redeem points on the SPG website, there is an option to transfer them to miles. When you redeem 20,000 SPG points, you will receive 25,000 AA miles (it can take up to a week). Say you manage to earn 107,000 AA miles in each account by December 1st. You could transfer 13,000 SPG points to top off your AA account, then redeem 120,000 AA miles for one Anytime reward SEA-FCO.

You'll need to book one AA ticket from each account, select seats together, then call AA to link the reservations (just in case of later complications).

Do you have any SPG points now?

Like others have said, transferring SPG points to miles in bulk once you've found availability and put a ticket on hold is probably your best bet (if you have a stockpile of SPG points).

Are you willing to apply for some credit cards? There's reasonableish bonuses out there (between the actual airline cards and the credit card points [Membership Rewards, Chase Sapphire]) that both of you could independently apply for to bulk up on how many miles you have.

Birdseye, good catch on the Milan option--and would agree with holding the flight for five days. I would also explore some additional options. 90k is so close to a business class award (100k) that it seems a shame to pay that:

1) Call Alaska & AA, to check other availability.
--Check from their partner gateways too (if you can save 60k miles between you by getting low rewards, would it be worth $400 in airfare to the gateway?)
--Check for business class as well (if you're in for 90k, may as well check for 100k J awards).
2) Consider your flexibility:
--Does it have to be Rome this year--perhaps there are other destinations that have availability, and you could do Rome the following year?
--Would Thanksgiving or Christmas break work?
--Or, are you so flexible that you can roll the dice on released availability a few weeks out? Again, the agents can be your friend--they often know which flights tend to open up closer to flight date.

This is probably obvious, but flying out of Milan does add the cost of the train from Rome, which IIRC would be a couple hundred/pp. That's great if you want to visit Milan on this trip.

Once you get into the game, you'll find that business class does become practical with enough planning.

Others have answered the SPG question well. I've found that AmEx MR rewards (which work the same way) transfer immediately to some airlines, but others can drag on. When you have enough SPG or MR points, you'll want to find availability and search FT for the transfer times that people have experienced.