Hello,

I am trying to figure out the best way to get from Seattle to Florence on April 25 or 26, returning May 4.

I will be CO Platinum in a couple of weeks (ST+), if that makes a difference. I also have enough miles on Amex to transfer as many miles as I need into any of the Skyteam carriers.

I will only fly Business or First (prefer first if possible). I'm currently holding Air France in business (via CDG), for around $3600 per person (2 people). I also wouldn't mind booking into CDG and taking a train to FLR. I've looked on expertflyer, and called Flying Blue, Continental, and Delta to try to find a way to do this with miles (or upgrade a lower fare with miles), and there doesn't appear to be any way to do this. It also looks like NW has a nonstop to AMS that could be of some use, but no mileage availability there either.

Any suggestions or tricks?

Thanks

I think AZ flies to FRL. or FCO for a short train ride. should be out of newark. I am confused about their mileage chart, but I think (sort of) that if you avoid CO, you can do business for only 80k miles. first is only 120k, but I don't think they do first. I do not know if that gets to high season rates.

course do not know if AZ will be around then, either....... latest sale is to be by dec 2007.

I'd rather not go that far out of the way (to EWR) to get to Italy from SEA, if possible.

You can only redeem for an F reward if you're banking in AF/KL; DL/CO/NW are not allowed to redeem for F seats on AF. The 80K TATL award from CO is only for all KL-metal flights, so if you can get the SEA-AMS-FLR routing you can do it for the 80K. That being said, intra-Europe J is a joke, so don't get hung up on that detail. If you fly DL TATL you can redeem for 90K (via CO) or there is the regular 100K award.

With the pretty specific travel dates that you have there may be issues with availability. That being said, the AF non-stop to CDG has Y available on your prefferred outbound dates, and on the 23rd you can fly NW/KL/AF SEA-AMS-CDG-FLR for the standard reward level (50K).

For your return on the 4th there is availability on AF/AS routing FLR-CDG-SFO-SEA. It is a 6:50a departure from FLR, which is pretty early, but there is an option there.

So if you depart one day early or late there are plenty of options. Would those work for you?

But it's not out of the way...The diversion isn't that big. SEA-FLR is 5541 miles, while SEA-EWR-FLR is 6579, an increase of less than a fifth. I've taken connections involving much more backtracking!
I think you should go via EWR or JFK. Fly whichever flight to Europe you can get from there (and there are so many that you will definitely be able to find availability for one), then connect to an AZ flight to FCO or MXP. You can then rent a car, go by train or get a domestic flight. If you can get a flight from the US to CDG, AMS, PRG or LYS, you can connect to services going to Bologna which is very near FLR. Similarly, there are flights to Pisa from CDG.
There are also some great deals for paid tickets out of NYC- under �2000 a piece (though some of these are quite inflexible and require a long adv purchase- check rules).

Also, DL flies JFK-PSA (I forgot about that one earlier) so while is is hypothetically a couple extra hours of flying (~1000 miles) to go via NYC, it is also one fewer connection and probably a shorter total travel time because of the "missing" layover.

Also remember that you can mix and match, so you could do SEA-JFK-PSA on the outbound on DL and FLR-CDG-SFO-SEA on the return using the routing I suggested above.

Hmm...Sounds like something might be doable. Keep in mind that I don't want to go in Y. I need at least Business. I can definitely do a day earlier on the way there and a day later on the way back. I can't tell from above in all cases whether you are talking about coach or first. What you mention at the beginning about having to have miles in AF/KL shouldn't be an issues, since as I mentioned, I can transfer from Amex easily.

All the routings I suggested were in J, not Y. I used the CO reward booking engine to view everything, as it now alos includes AF in the results. I fould the availability I mentioned using the 23rd on the outbound (one day early) and the 4th on the return (preferred date).

Give the CO engine a whirl, and if it works you can instantly transfer the MR points to your CO account and book the flight.

This is awesome. FT may have just saved me $7k (thanks to you). Can you give me details on using the CO engine? I assume you don't mean to just do it on the CO.com site?

I did, in fact, mean just jump onthe CO site and plug the cities and dates into their reward booking engine. My service fee is a very reasonable 5%

But seriously, the CO reward booking on their home page is actually pretty effective, especially with the color-coded calendar showing dates that have availability and those that don't.

It also looks like the outbound might not be available anymore, which would be unfortunate. Also make sure that all of your segments are in F, as CO will show the whole reward in F, even if some segments (including the TATL) are in Y.

I'm not even seeing the return available when I look. Does it matter that my platinum onepass status hasn't shown up yet? I expect it to within the next 2 weeks. I put in SEA-FLR, and also tried SEA-CDG just for fun...Unless you mean to put in a multi-destination with each leg or something?

I didn't do multi-destination, and platinum shouldn't matter except possibly for the NW segments. Otherwise it doesn't provide any benefit to availability.

Weird. I'm seeing availability for business on the way out, going NWA to DTW then AMS, through to CDG, but nothing at all on the way back. Are you still seeing some J availability using the CO.com engine?