Help Using Points/Miles to Fly to Scotland
 

Hello, I've just started collecting points and miles and things, so I still don't really have a good sense of how they can be used.

I'm looking to fly as cheaply as I can from the East Coast (Washington or New York) to Scotland (Glasgow or Edinburgh) from June 14-17.

My points/miles are not very extensive (I'm working on it!), so I'm not sure if they can be used at all, but I was hoping they might be able to be used to pay for part of the ticket? Maybe?

Delta: 57K
Mariott: 50K
AmEx Reward: 50K
US Air: 37K

If anyone has any suggestions/tips/helpful advice, I'd be very grateful! Thank you!!!

The obvious route with your DL points would be something like JFK-AMS-EDI or JFK-AMS-GLA, or try -CDG- as the intermediate stop. It depends if there is any availability on KL/AF for the last hop, which can be tricky. Have you tried looking on DL's website?

I'm not familiar with the Marriott or AmEx rewards, so I can't help there. You do not have enough US miles for this trip. If you can get 3k more Delta miles, you'd have enough for RT travel, assuming that award space is available at the lower rate. If you are not already a member of the Delta dining program, you should be able to get 1k miles as a sign-up bonus and some additional miles by dining once at a participating restaurant.

The Delta website is poor for award travel, but check your flights on AF and KL as well as DL. Check for flights from all of the NYC and WAS airports (and perhaps BOS and PHL as well), since availability may differ. Be prepared to travel through ATL if necessary, and try to be as flexible as possible.

Good luck!

Very tough given the short lead time and the time of the year you're flying. Add in that the airline miles you've accumulated are in programs that charge you a roundtrip price in miles even if you're just flying one way on them, and it becomes a more difficult task.

But, it can be done. You've almost got enough Skymiles to get to GLA on an award booking from JFK: 60K is required plus a cash cost of $180. Amex MR is a transfer partner with DL so you can get enough miles by making a transfer to DL (there's a 7.5% transfer fee) and then making your booking. Needless to say, if you're going to follow this route, act quickly as there's no guarantee seats will remain available for long.

Checking US for those dates from DC, there is availability in coach, but only at a miles cost of 125K Dividend Miles plus a cash payment of $195. US isn't a viable transfer partner with MR (there's a roundabout way, but it's inefficient and won't get you the number of miles you need anyway).

Marriott has one property in Glasgow and three in and around Edinburgh, all category 5 hotels, that will require 25K points per night. Marriott is not a transfer partner with MR, however, so you won't be able to get additional points that way. MR points will transfer to Choice, Best Western, and Hyatt. Some Best Westerns are available during your dates for 20-28K points, Choice has no hotels for your dates, and Hyatt has no properties in the vicinity of EDI or GLA.

Does this mean that award bookings on AF/KL are different from the ones that show up on Delta's website?


Ahh, that route sold out just now! Oh well, that's okay, I thought it was a long shot anyways, but I thought I'd just post here to see if there was some clever way of knocking a couple of hundred dollars off my ticket price. I guess that's not how miles/points work though. Bear with me, I'm learning!

For some reason, I thought Marriott points could be transferred to airline miles. Am I confused?


Another thing I was considering was AerLingus to Dublin, and then RyanAir or something from Dublin to Scotland. Does anyone know of any magical ways to get some points involved in something like that?

In general, I would avoid using RyanAir with a connection because RyanAir will not take responsibility if their flight is late and you miss your connection. Even if your connection is to another RyanAir flight.

Marriott points can be transferred, but you'll get no more than 15K miles for 50K Marriott points. I'd value two nights at a hotel as a much higher value--especially because you can transfer 3K MR to DL to get the 60K award and transferring to US won't get you close to an award.

Aer Lingus is a possibility. BA is a transfer partner with MR and Aer Lingus is an airline partner (not oneworld partner, however) with BA. 40K MR will give you 40K Avios, enough to go from JFK to DUB on Aer Lingus in coach. There's a cost of about $150 with that. Here's a thread on the Aer Lingus approach that also discusses going to points beyond: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ght=Aer+Lingus.

It's a no brainer for me:

Transfer 50k Amex to BA and book Aer Lingus business class (just 25k each way, best transatlantic deal out there). Buy cheap ticket to Boston and look into tickets to Edinburgh/Glasgow with Aer Lingus OR Ryanair.

From experience, in Boston they will check your bag all the way to EDI/GLA if you're connecting with Aer Lingus. With either Ryanair or Aer Lingus, though, you will most likely have a long connection time in Dublin (annoying to wait, but chance of misconnect is low). However, my business class boarding pass from my previous flight has been enough on three occasions to let me into Aer Lingus' rather comfortable lounge.

Also, why not spend a day in Dublin? Easy city to see in a day, fly out to Edinburgh the next?

OP specified 6/14-17 so although a sidetrip to Dublin sounds good, I'm assuming there's a schedule that must be met. Plus, neither United nor Qantas shows availability on IE for those dates, even in economy, so it's unlikely that a transfer to BA would provide a solution for his particular problem. By the way, OP, should you decide to transfer to BA, Choice, Best Western, or any other program from MR, it's not a bad idea to check for availability first before you lock you MR points into a particular program--once a transfer from MR is made, you can't transfer back.

Business may be a good use of miles, but since the OP has just less than 200K points total across all programs and seems to be on a schedule, economy for 40K out of JFK, one of the airports he's indicated he could fly from, seemed a bit better option than 50K out of Boston for business. Of course, if he could make Boston an option and business seats are available, it's definitely worth the 10K upgrade cost.

For that flight I would do economy too. Not enough points. It isn't that long from the east coast either.