I am planning a trip to Europe for 3 family members to Europe in summer of 2013 week of July 4 and only two are old enough to apply for cards. Since tickets are available 11 months ahead of time, I am thinking I have 2 months to get the miles together.

My strategy is:

2 Us Airways cards - 40kx2 miles, no purchase
2 Chase Sapphire Preferred - 40x2 miles, $3000 minimum spend in 3 months
1 Chase Ink Bold - 25k miles up front, 25k more later on with spend.

This will yield 185k US Airways miles (I can front them the UR miles and get them back later if the sapphire doesn't post in time) and use Star Alliance partners to fly. I then want to do the following trip:

NYC-LHR (train from LHR to CDG as it's way more convenient) CDG-VIE (destination) VIE-NYC

This should cost 180k UA miles. My main question is whether this can be obtained using the US air miles provided it is available on United for 60k miles and whether this is a legal routing according to US Air award restrictions (open jaw OR stopover).

Good plan or is there a better way to get the 3 tickets? They actually have about 160k AA miles right now, but I can never find good award routings on AA in middle of summer so I'm thinking getting the US Air miles is the way to go.

I then have the rest of the year to work out hotels.

I'm not an expert on availability, but do you have a strategy to get the other 20K USAir miles? I don't think they have any transfer partners. Although they do have the Grand Slam promotion in the fall in which it's reasonably easy to get 10K extra miles.

Also, beware of surchages flying in and out of LHR.

As to hotels:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onlin...ng-primer.html

Is there a reason to get US cards and not UA? There is a trick, which I can't vouch for, that if you have at least one UA mile in your account and log in, you can get a better CC offer. You can just sign up for their dining rewards, or if need be transfer 1000 Chase points.

I may be missing something or misunderstand your post...but US Airways is not a transfer partner for Chase Ultimate Rewards.

More likely $238 per person +125,000 DRs for the 4th of July weekend.
You are likely going to need way more miles as low reward availability is shrinking like the polar ice cap.

Learn what you can about Grand Slam and be prepared to play. Also, get those USAirways credit cards and plan to spend, spend, spend. Too late for the US Airways debit cards.

Thank you both! I actually didn't realize UR points don't transfer to US Air.

I also realized that, as a US Airways Card holder, one gets 5k miles off a ticket.

So new plan:

2 US Airways cards
30K SPG points transferred to US Air (will have them apply for one SPG card)
Total: 2x55k

2xSapphire Preferred with 60k transferred to UA for a 60k ticket.

The reason for applying for US Air over UA cards is that UA is issues by Chase and it's hard to get two cards from Chase within a 3 month period. The US Air card can be obtained from Barclays without affecting the other applications.

I don't understand. UA has plenty of availability, especially 11 months ahead of time. Are you saying one can't get the Star Alliance tickets available on UA with US Air miles?

Booking 11 months out, you're very likely to find some availability.

You should also be aware that that discount only applies to US flights, not partner flights.

Where are you leaving from and where in Europe were you wanting to get to?

Another option (less expensive than buying the tix outright but more expensive than trying to score tix on a domestic airline) is 2 of you applying for the British Airways Visa (50K bonus points per person after first use of card for 100K points). British Airways also allows "Household Accounts" so could set that up and have 100K in that account. Availability on British seems to be pretty good even on short notice (for example 3 reward coach seats for 4th of July thru 13th of THIS year were available from PHL to LHR as of 5 minutes ago).

Sounds great but now the bad news....fees and fuel surcharges are high on British. Those 3 coach tix I mentioned would run you 90K in miles (which you would have from the two Visa cards)....but taxes and fees on the 3 tix comes in at around $1900. Which is about 1/2 of the cost if you bought the tickets outright on British Airways.

Not saying it is a GREAT option compared to some others....but at least another option.

May be a bit of a crapshoot over 4th of July. If on US Airways metal using USAirways DRs it may run the higher amount. Not seeing the availability I have seen in past years.

While you do need to plan ahead for a trip of this sort, you don't need to book reward tickets 11 months ahead. I have no experience using miles on USAirways, but summer 2013 award flights to Europe on UA and its European partners should be available for 60,000 miles during the Fall of 2012 and winter of 2013 as long as you have some flexibility. This year, I booked two such trips to Europe, one for June/July 2012 and the other for September 2012, about 7 months ahead in each case. Admittedly, finding three tickets for the same flight is more difficult, but award availability keeps changing and you should be able to allow yourself more time to acquire the miles needed for your trip.

Three seats on the same flight and limiting to over 4th of July weekend are where it may get interesting. Might be wise to have a Plan B and Plan C. PM me if you need to bulk miles.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only person planning ahead! I'm planning a trip for August 2013 in business/first class and starting my points earning way early.

I definitely don't want to use Avios. I would rather just buy the ticket rather than waste miles and still pay the high ticket fees. I actually have lots of Avios banked from the Nordstrom promotion (expensive designer bag - thanks the points guy!) and am only going to use them for short flights or travel to South America.

Dates are slightly flexible, as in, they can go end of August if they don't get that week specifically, but it has to be during summer vacation. Cities are also flexible. They prefer London and Paris and another city (though I find LHR is the easiest place to find award tickets and I chose Vienna as there are direct flight CDG-VIE on Star Alliance.

They are based in NJ and can use any of the NYC airports, though PHL is also ok.

So one question that I am confused about given the responses everyone is giving (i.e. focusing on US flights) is the following:
If I see a Saver award on UA for 30k each way, can I get it using the US Air miles by calling CS even if it's not available on the US Air award booking website?

Some times when traveling with 3 i have found that i have been able to purchase 2 tickets at the saver rate and one at the double full fare rate. i know this is not the best deal but when you need to fly in peak times it is sometimes necessary,
one ther rout you may look at is getting the AA cards visa and amex for 50k each, then adding the spg for 30 each. tha would get you 130k aa miles each, that would get you two savers and one full ticket

Thanks, but it really goes against my principles to ever pay the non-saver rate for an award ticket as it really destroys the value one is getting (80k per ticket when it should be 60k and the cpm quickly goes from 2 to 1.5). Since my family is flexible with dates and cities, I think we can do better than that so I am set on the 3 tickets at 60k or just going another time.