As you suspected, they are starting to black out dates to use your miles. I had to push back our departure date to Monday, Oct. 21. I think the weather will still be fine. I guess it is what it is. Looks like you can only fly for 30k miles on Mon, Tues, or Wed.
Onto the itinerary!
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| Madrid |
Madrid to Lisbon on Friday Oct. 25, overnight train, arrive Sat. Oct. 26
Lisbon back to Madrid on Sun. Oct. 27, arrive Mon. Oct. 28. Go directly to Seville (hopefully these are at the same train station).
Seville to Valencia on Wed. Oct. 30.
Valencia to Barcelona on Friday Nov. 1.
Barcelona to Madrid on Sun Nov. 3
Depart at 6:25 AM on Mon. Nov. 4. Connect in Frankfort, arrive home at 12:55 PM.
59 hours of travel. $1,532 average travel costs per person (I average the United flights since obviously one is using miles).
So, here is something interesting. You can use your miles Saturday October 19 to Monday November 4. I know that's 11 days off work, but those are the only dates I could make this work.
ReplyDeleteThis is round trip to Madrid.
You use your miles on United, pay something like $100 in transaction fees.
I fly US Airways for $1,010. Same flight times there and back, connect in Philly, we are just booking through different places. I don't know if we can select our seats to be adjacent to each other.
The United flight to Madrid says it's operated by USAir. Both United and USAir say the flight home is operated by GoJet. So I feel confident these are the same flights.
I know that's an extra day off work. And we need to take the train both to and from Madrid to Lisbon. And we would have to figure out how to sit together, but I reduced our airfare costs to about $1100 for the two of us.
I may have to investigate this idea a little more.
I should note, I could not get miles flights and regular flights to match up for those dates on United. You have different options using your miles than I had booking an individual ticket. That's why I investigated the USAir thing.
DeleteDoesn't make much sense, but it is what it is.
I cannot seem to make this work with anything other than round trip to Madrid.
ReplyDeleteUnited won't tell me how many miles it costs to do a mufti-city (i.e. Chicago-Lisbon, Madrid-Chicago) unless you are logged in.
Also, it looks like you would have to fly United Chicago-Philly and then USAir Philly to/from Lisbon/Madrid/Barcelona.
I would be on USAir the whole time, so we would not be together Philly-Chicago.
I could try to book round trip on United the same times as you Philly-Chicago, then USAir Philly-Europe, but needless to say it gets complicated, and probably loses it's cost effectiveness. Chicago to Philly is 10,000 miles. I think I have 17,000, so not quite enough for a round trip. Damn! So close.
So, we can look into this option further, but we might need to do it together so we can see how many miles it would take you to do the multi-destination thing.
I can use miles on United ultimately flying on other airlines that our part of the Star Alliance. I looked at 10/19 to Lisbon out of Barcelona on 11/3. It's 60K miles so I have that covered. The outbound is US Airways and the return is Lufthansa so I'm not sure how that works if you can book separately and it saves money.
ReplyDeleteUS Airways jacks up the price on one way.
ReplyDeleteI think on my subsequent posts you are using United miles on partner airlines.
ReplyDeleteBut the lesson is it has to be the same partner airlines for all legs of the journey to make this work, right?
So all United or all USAir or all Lufthansa.
If you fly US Air there and Lufthansa back, then I can't book those same flights.
Also, if Lufthansa direct to USA? Or connect in Frankfort or Munich?
You can book those flights but it is expensive. It doesn't make sense. Ugh! Lufthansa is through Munich. I tried to get two flights that were all the way through on the same airline, but couldn't make it work with those dates. I might be able to on different dates.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Options 7 and 8 that I posted? Do not want to fly round trip through Madrid?
Delete