Hi! We are planning to fly to Croatia next year and want to use frequent flier miles as much as possible. We can't get to Dubrovnik on the airline with which we have our miles, although it would get us to one of the cities with regional discount flights to Dubrovnik. I am wondering if someone who has done this before would please comment on the ease or difficulty of arriving in a city on one airline, going through customs and retrieving baggage, and then checking right back in for a completely separate flight (the tickets would not be linked to one another). We do not intend to spend any time in the connecting city as we want as much time as possible in Croatia. Thanks!

First, check with your FF program. Your airline may have a partner that flies to DBV, so you can get there without extra miles/costs.

But if you have to buy your own ticket into DBV, the level of difficulty depends on cities and airport. For example, it'd be highly difficult if it involves an airport change. But not so much if it's at a relatively small airport, and you have adequate time between flights.

I have done things like that before. What I did was to allow myself extra time for the connectiion because if the first flight is delayed and you can't make it to the connecting flight, you're on your own. To me it is worth the hassle if the saving is large enough.

I just tried to do this with Delta miles using their partners. I'll cost 75K miles per ticket. I was trying to use only 50K pp.

One way of proceeding would be to go to:
http://www.whichbudget.com this is a listing of cheapo airlines that fly out of most of Europe's airports. You can then go to the cities that your main carrier flies into, and look up cheapo airlines that fly from there to Croatia.

As an example, I looked up one of these, Wizz Air, which has flights going from Luton airport near London to Split for as low as 14.99 GBP in September.

Have fun looking.

As an alternative you could also use www.skyscanner.net

Were you able to be flexible on your dates for Delta? I am flying this summer on FF miles for Delta and found that the more flexible I could be, the better my odds. I got 50K tickets. you also might have more luck later. They are adding new gateways all the time (i.e., Prague recently) and so the parameters might change in a month or two. I'm not sure, but they might have a listing somewhere on their site of new gateways and when they are available--that might also help. Good luck. I've heard Dubrovnik is absolutely beautiful.

Thanks, everyone! This information is really helpful. It is good to hear from people who have had success traveling this way.