Flyertalk Gurus needed...
 

I am trying to plan a year-long adventure in Europe, with my two daughters. Ideally, I would like to leave from LAX to any airport in Switzerland in mid-August. These will be one-way tickets as I have not yet determined when I am returning to the US. I have checked on Continental's site, but could not find any availability.

Does anybody have suggestions on other ways to search for availability on Star Alliance flights?


I currently have 108,000 miles on Continental/United
and 90,000 miles on American.

Thank you so much for your help!

Welcome to Flyertalk.

Do you mean August 2011 or 2012? In which class of service (economy, business) do you hope to travel?

AA offers one-way awards for half the miles of a round trip award. Someone else will know if Continental or United has a similar redemption option.

Welcome to FT! From what I've heard, the best way to search for Star Alliance flights is on the Air Nippon (ANA) website. However, you'll need to sign up for their mileage program to search. I haven't actually used this yet myself.

Continental is pretty good as well, but it looks like you're not finding anything there.

Yes, since it's now past June 15th, Continental should allow you to book a one way award for half the miles. If you can't do it online, you can give them a call. United already offers this option.

Aeroplan.com or continental.com (but its missing swiss)
If you find 3 tickets on Aeroplan - call Continental to book

3 one-way economy tickets will be 90,000 points.

For example on August 16 - there are 3 tickets available on Aeroplan (call continental - or try to force the routing using multi-city search)
Los Angeles-Calgary-Frankfurt-Zurich/Geneva

THREE seats will be extremely hard, so I would grab those ASAP.

Yes both Continental and united offer one way awards, though star alliance one way awards can't be booked online at united yet(must call in), Though you can transfer miles between CO and UA for free instantly.

Since this *Alliance specific I'll move it over there. Good luck & welcome.

90k in 1 acct on aa gets 3 1 way saver tix when available....good luck

i looked at lax-zrh....no saver award during aug....not even for 1 pax....

you could check for partner[s] by calling aa....

If you are returning within 330 days of departure, you can book the roundtrip now (or two one-ways on UA/CO). Since a round trip cash ticket often costs the same as a one-way, that might be the cheaper way to go. Then, if you change the dates, just need to pay the change fee (which can run $250+). As noted above, you can also move miles between UA and CO on line very easily.

Welcome to FT, Luness!

If you want to try the ANA tool that lrluis mentioned here's a good introduction.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/bmi-d...sterclass.html

Just a warning: Mid august is the main travel season for tourist travel between the US and Europe. This is likely the most difficult time to find awards in economy (premium classes are easier). If you find any somewhat reasonable connection grab them!
Using AA miles you can not only use AA (they only have one flight a day to ZRH), but also AA/BA to LHR and then a BA connector to Switzerland or AA/Iberia to Spain.You cannot find seats other than on AA on the AA site, you need to call or use the websites of some of the Oneworld airlines.
If you are able to find long-haul flights, but none to Switzerland you should also consider airports in southern Germany, northern Italy or eastern France. But normally the long-haul is the problem.

Sorry if I underestimate your awareness but I would like to touch upon a couple of points other than the specific flight availability questions addressed by other responses to your OP. First, depending on what passport(s) you (and your daughters) hold, a 'year-long adventure in Europe' may require more than just getting on the plane and going there. To wit, you might need to organise a visa in advance and this may be complicated by your having 'not yet determined' your return. Second, is your girls' other parent in the picture at all? In this day and age, with 'parental abduction' stories often in the news, you might want to check to make sure there will be no complications with taking your minors across international frontiers.

cheers,

Henry

Thank you for the warm greeting and all the wonderful ideas. As a note, we are all Swiss citizens as well as US and will be going mainly to CH but thanks for the point about the international one-way with kids and mom only.

I've seen good availability on LX for BOSZRH...so you could connect over to there.

Maybe also check the LX SFOZRH flight.