My travel goal for 2003 is to fly the Concorde, any route, with minimal $$ and/or FF miles. Ideas on how I can accomplish?

I am NW Platinum, have over 500K miles, 200K marriott points.
Thanks!
TCflygirl

I'm not sure Community is the right place for this, and I'm no BA expert, but I do think I have an answer for you.

A round-trip award on the Concorde is 125,000 BA miles. Alternatively, for 95,000 BA miles, you can fly one-way on the Concorde and return in economy on a traditional jet.

Marriott points can be exchanged for BA miles, but this is where an exact calculation of your Marriott points is required. To get 125k BA miles, you would need 2 566 awards (125k Marriott = 50k BA * 2 = 100k) and 1 565 award (75k Marriott = 25k BA) for a total of 325k Marriott Points. Similarly, the 95k BA miles would require 2 566's (250k Marriott total = 100k BA total) for a total of 250k Marriott points.

In reading the BA board, someone implied if you book your award directly through the BA executive club desk, you may be able to redeem just a one-way Concorde award JFK-LHR for 80k BA miles, which would require a 566, a 565, and a 789, where 215k Marriott points would get you 80k BA miles. Then you could get a NW award for the return and any domestic connections.

All of this is convoluted, and it would certainly make it easier if there were a way to transfer miles out of NW to a program that could get you a BA award, but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case.

Note that this answer only applies to a solution strictly within the terms and conditions of the programs. I'm sure others may offer alternatives that may or may not be technically permitted but would still work.

You could try e mailing Americana vacations plc at [email protected] they have special fares one way on a Concorde and economy/ club/first the other way. Not cheap but might be worth a shot.

Nigel

Delta has a round-trip award on the Air France Concorde to Paris for 160,000 miles. I've gotten four of these in the last 3 years.

Bruce

I've never taken a flight on BA but I just transferred 140K miles into my account from Diner's Club double miles promotion. BA usually runs this in the summer.

I originally planned on a couple of W+ tix but now I'm saving for at least biz class. If I keep putting miles in (hotel hopping, etc.) I'll wind up with enough for a Concorde out/biz back or something like that.

Not sure if I'll make it in 2003, but at least it's a do-able goal to shoot for.

Priority Club (Holiday Inns. etc.) is running a double miles promo in January. A bit of hopping there could get you 5-10K miles in a short time.

Lots of ways to get the miles needed. If you're bound and determined to pay ($12,000 R/T?)...well, God bless you.

I would try and go to coupon connection and make a trade for some Qantas miles. 125,000 will get you Concorde both ways or one way on BA up to 10K miles.

I am not in favor of DL/NW/CO codesharing. However if it does get approved (maybe late this month), I hope NW offers an AF Concorde award for 160,000 mi. If so, save me a seat!

I don't care for DL so I am 80,000 mi short. I should not have wasted a DL award on NZ a few years ago and saved it for Concorde.

If you have 100,000 Starwood points you can move them over to Qantas now and get enough miles for two BA Concorde flights. An amazing deal. Won't last long.

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ff

Thanks for all the great ideas! I do have some Starwood points and can cetainly utilize some of the other avenues. I'll get researching and I'll see you on the Concorde!

TC Fly Girl, former APN guy here... good luck with the Concorde award, I recently got mine booked for next summer, using the SPG>Qantas>BA route. Also, if you have AMEX rewards points, you can convert those to SPG points and into Qantas miles, but hurry, SPG is going to a 1:1 from a 1:2 Qantas miles ration at the end of the year. Good Luck!

The real thing that we need to do is get our crappy protectionist government to open up our skies, and in the process allow AA and BA miles to be earned and used interchangibly across the Atlantic.

d

Major bummer on changing the conversion from 1:2 to 1:1 (sure enough, its noted on the Starwood site). This already was a great deal yet I was lucky enough to also convert AMEX MR points at 2:1 (special promotional conversion rate - normally it is 3:1) to Starwood then Starwood to Qantas at 1:2 which when combined with the 25% bonus given by Starwood for every 20,000 points transferred yielded (2) BA 1st Class awards N. America - Europe (each limited to 10,000 total miles flown including any open jaw) thru Qantas which are usable for Concorde on the JFK-LHR portion of the trip, the rest in Europe is in business class. All of this for a mere 100,000 AMEX MR points !!!

As they always say, anything that's too good can't last forever.

YGM :-)

Check out the footnote here:

http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/...s/pointsTables

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can tell you can no longer get BA Concorde awards through the Quantas FF program. This was also posted somewhere on the Starwood forum.

Another option is to look and see if there is a BA consumer credit card available. Like you - I'm also aiming for a concorde flight (although likely not until 2004). Our corporate card gives BA miles at 1 per dollar - in addition to charging all of my travel expenses, I typically use it for gas, groceries, etc. and then pay off the bill every month in order to bump up my miles.