Help with Award Booking to VCE

Old Nov 25, 2015, 8:51 pm
  #16  
 
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Originally Posted by OliverB
PS - Beautiful photos! Were they both taken at the Gritti?
No - stayed at a smaller boutique hotel owned by a local couple - amazing place and located close to everything - the first picture is of a private room in Doges palace - so cool!!!
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 9:03 pm
  #17  
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I agree also that 10 days is far too long in just Venice. A couple of day trips (definitely Padua, maybe Verona) would be worthwhile. An option leaving or arriving is train to/from Munich. Adds travel flexibility.

Last edited by IAH-OIL-TRASH; Nov 25, 2015 at 9:15 pm
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 9:41 pm
  #18  
 
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Just spent 9 nights in Venice this past September, and I enjoyed every moment--didn't seem too long at all, and can't wait to go back. Of course, YMMV.
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 10:28 pm
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And of course if you're a cyclist, from Venice you can take a train to the base of the Stelvio and ride up! Late October could be questionable for weather though (but I wouldn't rule it out).

Even though I've not been to Venice, I agree it's quite a bit of time to spend in one place. On the other hand, it can be used as a base for day trips, maybe even an overnight.
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 10:59 pm
  #20  
 
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I think 10 days in Venice and the close surrounding areas would be fun!

Padua was a very easy day trip for us by train, definitely recommended. Vicenza and Verona were nice as well, we did them by car though.

Since you are looking forward to the food experience, a couple of 'experiences' we highly recommend:

1) A Cicchetti tour with a guide - We did this our first or second day, which was great as we learned about the different offerings, and some 'off the beaten path' locations. We then made a point to look for new places to try out the rest of our stay.

2) Market shopping (near Rialto) / Cooking school. This was a wonderful day - spent an hour or two shopping in the market, then went back to the house / commercial scale kitchen to cook everything up! (We did it with Enrica Rocca).

Regarding your flight - perhaps this is not part of your question, but I do not see your origin? I assume SFO...

I would say if the flight you want is available now in saver Y, either book it now (if you don't mind two change fees), or wait a few days for your return to open up and then book the round trip flight (if you only want one change fee).

The only downside to booking two one ways is two change fees.

Then keep checking... Saver business may open up, there may be a fare sales, etc.

If something better does open up, you will be happy enough with the better option so it will hopefully take the sting out of paying the change fee...

Have fun!
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 11:09 pm
  #21  
 
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There is actually another option. I think it hasn't been mentioned because you mentioned your flight is operated by LH. However, looking at your flight times, it looks like you will be flying out of SFO-FRA. The 7:05 flight is actually operated by UA, so this would work. You can book into economy and waitlist for premium cabin. They will deduct the premium cabin amount, but if it does not clear, you get the difference back. It should be 57.5 miles for one way in business. More about it here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...s-issues.html#

Also, unlike domestic flights, r/t to europe are usually less than 2x one ways. And often less than a single one way!

You can't book your return yet, since the schedule hasn't opened, but looking at some other dates around then, it looks like the r/t would be $1535 pp.
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Old Nov 25, 2015, 11:12 pm
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by OliverB
If leaving the previous day (arriving 1 day early) I could also select Business Saver for 57.5k miles + $58.20 but it adds an extra stop and several hours to the flight duration.
Presuming the extra stop is a short domestic connection, and you can sleep on planes, the extra time may be well worth it. Only you can decide, though.

Originally Posted by OliverB
Edit: the Business Saver flight is actually operated by Swiss, not Lufthansa.

I'm guessing all of these Star Alliance airlines will offer the same mileage redemption as UA?
Not in business: flying UA metal is 57.5k one way US-Europe, but flying a partner is 70k. Are you sure the 57.k option you saw wasn't UA to Europe followed by Lufthansa/Swiss to VCE? That would probably be "Eurobiz" anyway i.e. economy seats with the middle seat empty.

If you are considering business, don't need the stopover/open-jaw allowed by a RT redemption, and your dates are relatively fixed, I'd book it as one-ways and secure your outbound now. Yes, there are double fees if you need to make changes later, but getting 2x business seats can be a challenge.

Originally Posted by OliverB
We've chosen to travel between seasons, so we'll hopefully miss the cruise ship crowds. While it's true that certain parts of the city can be very touristy, the fun is finding the local flavor. I'm prepared for the costs. The hotel is 100% free as is the flight. So bring on the food and wine! I'm slowly compiling a list of restaurants; mostly charming neighborhood bcaros, old rustic osterias & small family-run trattorias, historic caffs and pasticcerias, etc. Ten days will ensure we stray far from the tourist route!
Expect crowds, even in October. In my experience last month, Rialto and St. Mark's Square were still quite crowded, though I'm sure nothing like peak season.

Venice is physically very small, so you can't stray too far from the tourist route, especially since you will want to see the major sights on that route. There are less crowded areas which feel slightly less touristy, and you will surely discover them if you spend 10 days there.

Still, I'll add my voice to the chorus suggesting you reduce your time in Venice and visit somewhere else while you've already traveled so far. Florence is about 3 hours by high speed train (and cheap if you buy in advance, like 15 EUR per person cheap). It's full of amazing sights, and there are many nice apartments you can rent in the historic center at very reasonable prices (I had my best ever airbnb experience there). Those additional "free" nights in Venice are still costing you in the form of more expensive food/drink/transport and lost opportunity to see more of an amazing country.
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 11:56 am
  #23  
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Okay, time for a little update with both some good and bad news...

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for their input with regards to our trip and amount of time spent in Venice. Both my wife and myself have expended a lot of thought towards this trip, and we've both decided that we definitely want to spend a full 10 nights in Venice. We want to feel as though we're living in the city and my wife has some very close friends who she went to NYU with that are actually living in Venice, so it will be nice to spend time with them as well, which will add to the local flavor. We plan on taking several day/afternoon trips to the surrounding islands and possibly even a ferry to Croatia for a day, so I don't anticipate that we'll grow tired of Venice. We also plan to take some cooking classes and as mentioned earlier in this thread, just spend a lot of time unwinding, reading, etc. I can't think of a more picturesque setting to do so. So now that I've got that out of the way...

My wife convinced me to book the cheapest Super Saver (30K points) in economy on a 13.5 hr flight from SFO to Venice. I wanted to grab a Business Saver award for 50K but as we're building this itinerary from one-way legs, with only 110K UA miles (as of now - after having purchased our one-way to Venice) her advice is probably sound, as we should maximize our mileage. So that said, we're flying into VCE on 30K points in economy and I can't say I mind much, as it isn't costing us a dime, so far.

Here's where I really need your help...

My wife NEEDS to be back at work (bright and early) in San Francisco by Tuesday, Nov. 1st - she has important board meetings that she's overseeing and so there's no room for compromise whatsoever with respect to the date.

We do NOT want to cut our trip short by any amount of time. Our hotel is fully booked on points, and we really would like to spend a full 10 nights in Venice.

We do NOT want to spend more than 18 hrs traveling on the return. I would say that 18.5 hrs total travel time is the cap that we want to aim for when booking our return. That's significantly longer than our incoming flight to Venice, but accounting for possibly stops and layovers, I'd be willing to spend that much time flying home, if necessary.

Here's the problem -- almost all flight out of Venice on 10/30 are 25+ hrs in duration and/or leave way too early in the morning, which would make our final night miserable. I don't want to have to fly out at 6:30-7 AM if we're taking a boat from the Gritti to the airport at 4:30-5:00 AM. We'll want to shower before a 14+ hr flight and so we can pretty much rule out going to sleep at all if we're booked on any itinerary flying out of VCE before 8 AM. It's just not worth it, imo.

We could potentially fly out of VCE on 10/31 and spend one extra night at an airport hotel or conveniently situated room near Marco Polo Int'l. There's a 16hr 35min flight that takes us from VCE to BRU to DUB to SFO. That's one option... though it sounds like a pain in the .... We'd be extending our trip just to stay by the VCE airport to fly back the next morning with multiple stops all across the continent. It just sounds like a crappy way to go.

The other option, is of course, to fly out of Milan. Unfortunately, this doesn't offer many more possibilities either...

We'd have to fly out of MIL on 10/31 because all flights are scheduled in the early morning and there's no way we're going to take a boat to a train to another city to board a plane for an early AM flight... not to mention doing all of that prior to flying 15+ hrs int'l in the same day. That's not an option for us. So if we're flying out of MIL, we'd need to leave Venice by train at some point on 10/30, stay overnight in Milan, then depart MIL to SFO on 10/31. That would seem easy enough, and so far, it's our strongest option. It flies MXP to FRA / FRA to SFO for only 30K points/person in economy.

Ideally however, we'd be able to get to Frankfurt on a domestic flight and then go direct to San Francisco on points... I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring this out!

One other option that we considered is a flight from VCE to VIE on 10/30 (7:05 pm - 8:15 pm) and then a 10h 55m layover, departing VIE to FRA the next morning 10/31 (7:10 am - 8:50 am) - We'd stay overnight by the airport in Vienna, then fly to Frankfurt the next morning, continuing on to SFO. That also seems more complicated than it needs to be however.

Anyhow, rather than focus on all of the confusing and/or failed options that we've considered so far, I'll just summarize all points concisely and hope that others can chime in and offer more convenient and efficient suggestions...

- we need to arrive in San Francisco by Monday 10/31 at absolute latest.

- we can depart 10/30 or 10/31 from any conveniently situated airport.

- we do not want to leave Venice prior to 10/30 as we're fully booked (prepaid w/ SPG points) and content with our plans so far.

- we do not want to be traveling for 20+ hrs on the return itinerary. ideally, we'd like to find a flight back to SFO that makes sense and clocks in under 18 hrs travel time.

- we already have our SFO - VCE route booked and only have 110K left in UA points to use for the return. We do not want to pay full fare as prices are exorbitant flying one-way legs in/out of Venice (almost 3K/person!)

- we would consider paying for a cheap domestic fare to fly a more direct and convenient route on the int'l leg using our UA points.

- if we're going to be doing any travel from Venice to another destination within Europe (ie. planning to leave from any other city in Italy, Germany, Croatia, etc) then I would NOT wish to do it all on the same day - in other words, if flying out of Milan or Rome or Frankfurt, I would much prefer to transfer by train or ferry on 10/30 and then fly the international leg on 10/31 so that it's a bit less painful.

That's basically where we're at right now. I know that UA doesn't always display ALL award flights on Star Alliance partners, and I've discovered the following which depart VCE on 10/30 which sounds perfect... however the flight time is prohibitive as I don't want to have to be at Marco Polo at 4:30-5:00 AM; waking up at 3AM to shower and catch a boat - that would defeat the purpose of spending that night at the Gritti, even if it is booked on points. Here's the itin:

Venice Istanbul(IST)
06:30 09:55
TK1458 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 319
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Istanbul(IST) San Francisco
12:55 17:10
TK079 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 77W
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Total travel time 18h40min



It's also not a short flight, at least compared to our incoming flight from SFO to VCE at little more than 13 hrs. This seems like a huge headache and I'd really appreciate your input... also if anyone knows of other Star Alliance award seats I've missed, please let me know!
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 12:18 pm
  #24  
 
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Originally Posted by OliverB
Okay, time for a little update with both some good and bad news...

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for their input with regards to our trip and amount of time spent in Venice. Both my wife and myself have expended a lot of thought towards this trip, and we've both decided that we definitely want to spend a full 10 nights in Venice. We want to feel as though we're living in the city and my wife has some very close friends who she went to NYU with that are actually living in Venice, so it will be nice to spend time with them as well, which will add to the local flavor. We plan on taking several day/afternoon trips to the surrounding islands and possibly even a ferry to Croatia for a day, so I don't anticipate that we'll grow tired of Venice. We also plan to take some cooking classes and as mentioned earlier in this thread, just spend a lot of time unwinding, reading, etc. I can't think of a more picturesque setting to do so. So now that I've got that out of the way...

My wife convinced me to book the cheapest Super Saver (30K points) in economy on a 13.5 hr flight from SFO to Venice. I wanted to grab a Business Saver award for 50K but as we're building this itinerary from one-way legs, with only 110K UA miles (as of now - after having purchased our one-way to Venice) her advice is probably sound, as we should maximize our mileage. So that said, we're flying into VCE on 30K points in economy and I can't say I mind much, as it isn't costing us a dime, so far.

Here's where I really need your help...

My wife NEEDS to be back at work (bright and early) in San Francisco by Tuesday, Nov. 1st - she has important board meetings that she's overseeing and so there's no room for compromise whatsoever with respect to the date.

We do NOT want to cut our trip short by any amount of time. Our hotel is fully booked on points, and we really would like to spend a full 10 nights in Venice.

We do NOT want to spend more than 18 hrs traveling on the return. I would say that 18.5 hrs total travel time is the cap that we want to aim for when booking our return. That's significantly longer than our incoming flight to Venice, but accounting for possibly stops and layovers, I'd be willing to spend that much time flying home, if necessary.

Here's the problem -- almost all flight out of Venice on 10/30 are 25+ hrs in duration and/or leave way too early in the morning, which would make our final night miserable. I don't want to have to fly out at 6:30-7 AM if we're taking a boat from the Gritti to the airport at 4:30-5:00 AM. We'll want to shower before a 14+ hr flight and so we can pretty much rule out going to sleep at all if we're booked on any itinerary flying out of VCE before 8 AM. It's just not worth it, imo.

We could potentially fly out of VCE on 10/31 and spend one extra night at an airport hotel or conveniently situated room near Marco Polo Int'l. There's a 16hr 35min flight that takes us from VCE to BRU to DUB to SFO. That's one option... though it sounds like a pain in the .... We'd be extending our trip just to stay by the VCE airport to fly back the next morning with multiple stops all across the continent. It just sounds like a crappy way to go.

The other option, is of course, to fly out of Milan. Unfortunately, this doesn't offer many more possibilities either...

We'd have to fly out of MIL on 10/31 because all flights are scheduled in the early morning and there's no way we're going to take a boat to a train to another city to board a plane for an early AM flight... not to mention doing all of that prior to flying 15+ hrs int'l in the same day. That's not an option for us. So if we're flying out of MIL, we'd need to leave Venice by train at some point on 10/30, stay overnight in Milan, then depart MIL to SFO on 10/31. That would seem easy enough, and so far, it's our strongest option. It flies MXP to FRA / FRA to SFO for only 30K points/person in economy.

Ideally however, we'd be able to get to Frankfurt on a domestic flight and then go direct to San Francisco on points... I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring this out!

One other option that we considered is a flight from VCE to VIE on 10/30 (7:05 pm - 8:15 pm) and then a 10h 55m layover, departing VIE to FRA the next morning 10/31 (7:10 am - 8:50 am) - We'd stay overnight by the airport in Vienna, then fly to Frankfurt the next morning, continuing on to SFO. That also seems more complicated than it needs to be however.

Anyhow, rather than focus on all of the confusing and/or failed options that we've considered so far, I'll just summarize all points concisely and hope that others can chime in and offer more convenient and efficient suggestions...

- we need to arrive in San Francisco by Monday 10/31 at absolute latest.

- we can depart 10/30 or 10/31 from any conveniently situated airport.

- we do not want to leave Venice prior to 10/30 as we're fully booked (prepaid w/ SPG points) and content with our plans so far.

- we do not want to be traveling for 20+ hrs on the return itinerary. ideally, we'd like to find a flight back to SFO that makes sense and clocks in under 18 hrs travel time.

- we already have our SFO - VCE route booked and only have 110K left in UA points to use for the return. We do not want to pay full fare as prices are exorbitant flying one-way legs in/out of Venice (almost 3K/person!)

- we would consider paying for a cheap domestic fare to fly a more direct and convenient route on the int'l leg using our UA points.

- if we're going to be doing any travel from Venice to another destination within Europe (ie. planning to leave from any other city in Italy, Germany, Croatia, etc) then I would NOT wish to do it all on the same day - in other words, if flying out of Milan or Rome or Frankfurt, I would much prefer to transfer by train or ferry on 10/30 and then fly the international leg on 10/31 so that it's a bit less painful.

That's basically where we're at right now. I know that UA doesn't always display ALL award flights on Star Alliance partners, and I've discovered the following which depart VCE on 10/30 which sounds perfect... however the flight time is prohibitive as I don't want to have to be at Marco Polo at 4:30-5:00 AM; waking up at 3AM to shower and catch a boat - that would defeat the purpose of spending that night at the Gritti, even if it is booked on points. Here's the itin:

Venice Istanbul(IST)
06:30 09:55
TK1458 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 319
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Istanbul(IST) San Francisco
12:55 17:10
TK079 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 77W
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Total travel time 18h40min



It's also not a short flight, at least compared to our incoming flight from SFO to VCE at little more than 13 hrs. This seems like a huge headache and I'd really appreciate your input... also if anyone knows of other Star Alliance award seats I've missed, please let me know!
Using points = having flexibility

When you over constrain a problem ('must' fly on a certain date), using points becomes astronomically more difficult.

I would strongly suggest looking at a paid flight for your return, based upon your travel needs.

One good option I see (not bookable 10/31 yet):

One way flight
Mon, Oct 17
6:30 am 8:30 am
Venice (VCE) Amsterdam (AMS)
KLM 1650 Economy Class Boeing 737
2h 00m

Layover in Amsterdam AMS: 1h 20m

9:50 am 11:45 am
Amsterdam (AMS) San Francisco (SFO)
KLM 605 Economy Class Boeing 747
10h 55m

$1,470 / ticket
14h 15m total duration


Not sure if this one will be bookable on miles on 10/31, but looks like a good *A option:

Mon, Oct 17
2:30 pm 3:55 pm
Venice (VCE) Frankfurt (FRA)
Lufthansa 327
1h 25m

Layover in Frankfurt FRA: 1h 30m

5:25 pm 7:50 pm
Frankfurt (FRA) San Francisco (SFO)
United 927 Economy Class Boeing 747

14 h 20m duration...
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 12:30 pm
  #25  
 
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OP - have you considered using your miles to a major city in the EU - and then paying to fly to VCE on a local carrier? For example - getting into LHR/FRA/VIE may be a lot easier than getting to VCE on a saver ticket - and you may be surprised how cheap it is to fly intra-Europe in economy - so much so that you could afford to fly inter-continental in business class... Using LarkSFO's example - could you get to FRA/AMS with your miles and then pay to fly to VCE separately?
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 12:45 pm
  #26  
 
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There is also the option of the overnight sleeper train with deluxe 2 berth cabin with shower and toilet for 135 euro per person.It leaves Venice at 20:37 and arrives Munich at 06:10.

Plenty of time then to connect to a MUC-FRA-SFO flight.
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 2:13 pm
  #27  
 
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I was just in venice. foggy all 4 days I was there. anyway my original flight back was on LH-vce-fra leaving at 10:50 a.m. connecting to a nonstop UA flight to IAH. perhaps that would work for you. just add on the iah-sfo segment. flight time was 14h 25m to Houston.
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 2:35 pm
  #28  
 
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Originally Posted by OliverB
That's basically where we're at right now. I know that UA doesn't always display ALL award flights on Star Alliance partners, and I've discovered the following which depart VCE on 10/30 which sounds perfect... however the flight time is prohibitive as I don't want to have to be at Marco Polo at 4:30-5:00 AM; waking up at 3AM to shower and catch a boat - that would defeat the purpose of spending that night at the Gritti, even if it is booked on points. Here's the itin:

Venice Istanbul(IST)
06:30 09:55
TK1458 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 319
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Istanbul(IST) San Francisco
12:55 17:10
TK079 Flight number of Star Alliance member airlines 77W
Operated by Turkish Airlines

Total travel time 18h40min



It's also not a short flight, at least compared to our incoming flight from SFO to VCE at little more than 13 hrs. This seems like a huge headache and I'd really appreciate your input... also if anyone knows of other Star Alliance award seats I've missed, please let me know!

Back in May, my wife and I flew back VCE-SFO via IST. here's our flights:
Day, Date Flight Class Departure City and Time Arrival City and Time Aircraft Meal
Sun, 24MAY15 TK1458 X VENICE, ITALY
(VCE) 7:30 AM ISTANBUL, TURKEY
(IST) 10:55 AM A-319
Flight operated by TURKISH AIRLINES.
Sun, 24MAY15 LH1299 X ISTANBUL, TURKEY
(IST) 1:55 PM FRANKFURT, GERMANY
(FRA) 4:05 PM A-321
Flight operated by LUFTHANSA.
Sun, 24MAY15 UA927 X FRANKFURT, GERMANY
(FRA) 5:25 PM SAN FRANCISCO, CA
(SFO) 7:45 PM 747-400 Dinner

I would have liked to have traveled on the IST-SFO nonstop. However, back in May this TK nonstop route just started, there was no award availability.
I just looked for Oct 2016, this 7:30AM VCE-IST flight is available as economy saver for oct 23 and the prior weekends. Similarly the IST-SFO nonstop is available for Oct 23. I'm guessing the 7:30AM VCE-IST and the nonstop IST-SFO will become available within a week. One of my coworker and her family took the IST-SFO a couple of month ago and loved the service. For this 7:30AM flight, we stayed at a B&B that was 15min away from the airport. We got up at 4AM. Airport security was pretty quick, so we probably didn't need that much time. We spent a fair amount of time waiting in line for the 6AM opening of the currency exchange office to process the tax refund.
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 2:45 pm
  #29  
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Originally Posted by OliverB
Okay, time for a little update with both some good and bad news...

...

It's also not a short flight, at least compared to our incoming flight from SFO to VCE at little more than 13 hrs.
Westbound is always longer in the northern hemisphere; the winds make sure of that.

Beyond that, skip a night in Venice and get to Milan on the train or Vienna on a plane. Book it with the longer layover in that town and get a bit of variety at the end of the trip. I would absolutely take the overnight or different city 1-stop options over the multi-stop itineraries.

Also, I'll repeat the assertion I made before: There will be seats which come and go for this market/season. Don't stress about not having it perfect 300+ days away.
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Old Nov 30, 2015, 4:05 pm
  #30  
 
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Just noted the urgency w/regards to having to be back for an 11/1 meeting; if this is of utmost importance, I would fly back a day early and/or try to fly only on UA metal. It's travel; thinks happen. Recent experiences have shown me I'd much rather be dealing with UA when things happen than with a "contracted" carrier (ie, and very specifically, LH).

Could be that my better experiences with UA irrops is entirely a function of elite status with UA though.

I would keep return routing as clean as possible, but plan for the worst. Have alternatives ready to suggest if things go south. An escape plan, as it were. But more importantly, if it really is so important to have her back in the office on 11/1, shorten the vacation by a day, just in case. Otherwise you might be spending time stressing out over getting back in time, which isn't fun.
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