Looking to take my son to Germany next summer. Seems like getting to Asia is easy to figure out, but Europe requires a little more work?

Can you help me with which points might be the best to use and best way to search for award availability. Any stop over open jaw ideas would be very helpful.

1. I live in LAS
2. I don't care where we end up in Germany as long as we can get there.
3. prefer first class, but business is ok if it's a 180 degree bed.
4. Need 2 seats
5. Travel between May to Sept.

Here are my points

DL 400K
UL 135K
BA 800K
American Express 600K
Singapore 90K
Chase 50K
AA 300K
US 280K
Hawaiian 90K
Alaska 140K

I was thinking use the US miles as I have a good stash of BA and AA already? I know of Air Berlin which comes to Vegas, but confused on the seats, travel days, etc. How do I search for flights?

Any help at all would be great. Any tricks?

Try to use your Skypesos if at all possible. Getting anything of value for them is always a matter of luck, and your other points are worth more.

I'd suggest AA miles and there is a primer here on searching aa.com http://milevalue.com/ airberlin is one of their partners.

If you want to use UA or US try searching at united.com

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

I know that AB serves LAX, but I'm not aware that it serves LAS.

Star Alliance has good Germany coverage. So I guess that would end up most likely meaning US miles for you.

Lots of flights to Frankfurt in particular. And from there you can either connect to other parts of Germany or take trains to get around. It's a big country with lots of stuff to do.

I would use either the UA or Aeroplan serach engines to look for available flights or use AwardNexus to do that.

I easily booked C class awards using UA miles on their website for flights on LH and OS from/to IAD for July. Lots of awards available for summer travel which surprised me a bit. You will need to call US if you go that route.

Often Americans underestimate how small Europe is. For example Brussels ,Amsterdam , prag, zurich are only a few hours from germany. Closer than LAX is from LAS. So dont limit yourself to flights directly to Germany only

I do not believe AB will have an acceptable product for you. AA is pretty good and they have a nifty calendar tool.
Go in may or sep. its shoulder season and europe is not too crowded. I was just there yesterday and going again in June Feel free to pm if you need more help

Whatever program you use, don't forget that most of them do allow stopovers/open jaws, so some of your intra Europe travel can be covered.

Personally, I would try to use the US miles for a *A reward, seems to me the most flexible.

Alitalia LAX-FCO-Germany.

You might be able to find availability on dl.dumb and those are the best beds across the Atlantic.

Why people keep pushing AA with substandard products and BA fees.

LX is a decent backup plan, but good luck finding availability.

You can book AF easily with MR but you'll pay feeeees.

Nothing will come easily in summertime.

Deltahater's point is a valid one - I regularly fly to DUS for work in Holland

If you want to do many stops in Europe I would investigate the American Airlines explorer award chart which lets you do up till 16 segments with pretty much the same number of stop over. You could cover.a lot of Europe with that.

dl.dump?

I can see I have a lot of options to get there, but what would be the best value and seats for the money?

I looked at Swiss, but how do I search for an award? Luft?

Thanks for all the help

united.com, aeroplan, ANA and expertflyer all show swiss availability (first class is not a possibility unless you use lufthansa miles)