chepar

Hopefully someone can give me some quick advice.

I'm not a real frequent flyer, but have managed to save enough miles to qualify for a single RT saver award from Honolulu to Europe.

I've been hemming and hawing about trying to obtain a ticket for next June because I'll be flying with my 9 year old and only have enough miles for 1 free ticket. I unsure as to whether to redeem my miles and purchase the other ticket, and cross reference our itineraries - or to just pay for the two tickets and save miles to redeem for the both of us for another trip.

Well, this morning I was tooling around the UAL website and decided to just see if I could redeem my miles for the flights I wanted - since it's past that 330 days the seats first became available, I've been assuming they've been taken. Lo and behold, a seat is available for the exact flights that I was desiring.

So - should I grab it and later try to ticket my daughter on the same flights - or is this too much of a risk (considering she's a child and it's not like if there are problems we can just meet up at our final destination).

Any help is appreciated!

cls2paris

When I had to do a similar trip, I just called the airline and had them book both tickets at the same time. I am not sure if you can do that online, I've never tried.

Marilyn

If you can do it, use the mileage award for your daughter's ticket and purchase yours. That way you will get FF miles in your own account for the ticket you purchased.

mclaurie

Great suggestion from Marilyn. When you PHONE the UNITED desk, they can arrange for both a paid ticket and a mileage ticket together so it's on the same itinerary. Go for it!

Only other thought is have you considered buying both tickets and using mileage to upgrade to Business Class? Honolulu to Europe is a looong trip.

chepar

thanks for the replies.

I will be calling the United desk to book the paid ticket at the same time that I book my FF ticket. Right now it's pricing at over $1400, and I was hoping to wait until the fares dropped a bit before purchasing the paid ticket. However, I can see where not arranging for the two tickets at the same time could lead to some difficulties.

Upgrading would be nice, but I don't have enough miles to upgrade the both of us. Plus the higher cost of the upgradable tickets is an issue.

My actual itinerary is Honolulu to Chania, ferry to Athens, fly from Athens to Paris, train to London and fly from London to Honolulu 3 weeks later.

I'm thinking it's easier to book a RT Honolulu/LHR and then book the other legs separately. I've priced the flights from LHR to CHQ and ATH to CDG at $391 right now.

I'm wondering if I can extend my FF ticket down to Athens with an open jaw from LHR to Honolulu, but I'll have to talk to the United agent first.

Talk about a long way to fly - last year we flew out of Honolulu late on a Friday night and arrived in Rome mid afternoon on Sunday. The way this trip is looking, we won't be arriving in Chania until 8 or 9 in the evening Sunday.

P_M

I am not a parent so please excuse me if this is a dumb question. Would the child's ticket be less expensive than the adult ticket? If so, then I would probably buy the child's ticket and use the freebie for the adult.

chepar

hmm . . . good question, P_M. I'll have to ask about that.

welltraveledbrit

PM I was going to ask the same thing, though i think Marilyn's point about the miles is significant.

Chepar because you're using United miles you qualify for a Star Alliance award and may be able to book something creative...you have several options you could do an open jaw and combine it with a cheap one way on a low budget airline or you could do a stopover which is also a possibility.

I highly recommend calling a United agent to ask about these possibilities, though some agents are alot more helpful than others. As I understand it the United website only shows award availability on United flights but with the additional Star Alliance options you can fly Lufthansa, BMI and many others for the same number of miles. I flew to Armenia with a stopover in Vienna for only 50,000 mile from San Francisco.

Another issue to bear in mind is that one you have ticketed (and removed the miles from you account) you can change the dates without a fee or even return the miles for a fee, which may give you some leeway in terms of waiting to get a cheaper ticket for your daughter. I love frequent flyer tickets for their flexibility.

Hope this helps.

4totravel

I would not take Marilyn's advice...
1 - your daughter's ticket may be cheaper - not likely - but sometimes there is a small decrease in the ticket price for a child under 12 - mostly not the case, but worth the try.
2 - All you have to do to obtain your daughters frequent flier points is open an account for her (very easy and quick to do)and when you want to use the points just transfer them into your account...very simple.
Best of both worlds.
Also, I would have the airline hold that FF seat for you before someone else snags it - it may not be there when you have finally decided what to do.

kopp

Good idea from 4totravel - put that FF ticket on hold. I'm not sure about United, but American allows a 2 week hold on their FF reservations. Gives you plenty of time to figure out the rest of your reservation.

Happy travels!

KT

But I wouldn't necessarily count on being able to freely transfer miles from one account to another. United has a deal on until the end of this year allowing you to transfer up to 15K miles (in increments of 1K) from an account, for 1 cent per mile plus a $25 service charge. After that, who knows? It's not unusual for FF programs to forbid transfer of miles or combining miles from different accounts.

LoveItaly

Northwest allows to to use your ff miles for someone else IF you (the ff holder) pays for that other persons ticket. No extra fee to do this.

KT

But there is a difference between using your miles for someone else's ticket and transferring miles. For example, if you have 50K miles you can get someone else a ticket to Europe, but if you have 30K miles and that other person has 20K miles it's a different matter. So that's why the suggestion for chepar to earn the miles was made, presuming that chepar is more likely than her child to accrue enough miles over time for an award.

Marilyn

chepar, with a complicated itinerary like yours, I would definitely talk to a United awards agent. They can be really helpful in planning your trip because they know lots of possible itineraries that you could never figure out.

We are flying on American award miles to London and back from Paris. The AA agent found seats for us using Air Tahiti from Paris to LA, then AA from LA to SF. I would NEVER have thought of that!

Also, it was an American Airlines agent who advised me, when arranging a trip for my mother and myself, to use the award for her ticket and purchase mine, so I would get the FF miles in my account. If there is a cheaper ticket for your daughter, that might be the best option. But if not, what's the difference? Might as well make it easy and keep the miles in your account.

rkkwan

You need to call the Mileage Plus desk to get this figured out. But here are my points:

- Yes, if your daughter doesn't fly often, it's better to use miles for her, and then pay for your own so you earn miles for yourself.

- A child occupying a seat may get some discount, but not much. Usually ~10% off.

BUT!!!...

- If you just ticket her right now with miles, UA may want you to pay for unaccompanied child fees.

- Since buying a ticket outright is way too expensive right now, the only way to secure the FF award seat and without paying uncammopanied child fee may be to book it for yourself, then book the daughter's ticket when the price is right.

- I don't know what the unaccompanied child fee is. If it's not much, then maybe you can book her with FF miles.

mikemo

I would buy the cheapest tickets permitting upgrades to business/first and use the miles for the upgrades.
M

chepar

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Obviously, I am not really well versed in using my miles to the fullest. Much of my problem lies in the fact that I am pretty inflexible with my travel plans due to work obligations. In all honesty, I was pretty lucky to be approved for the 3 weeks I'll be gone in the first place and I was shocked that I had the ability to redeem my miles for the very flight I would have booked and paid money for, even without the consideration of redeeming FF miles.

So this is what I ended up doing - I called the United desk and got a semi helpful person who seemed rather harried. I first asked her whether I could use my miles for a ticket for my underage daughter. Her reply was "We don't care who the ticket is for." I then expanded my question to inquire if it mattered that I wasn't ready to ticket myself now, but would eventually ticket at a later date - essentially, booking the FF ticket for an "unaccompanied" minor. She again replied "We don't care who the ticket is issued to."

So, I first inquired about doing an open jaw from HNL to ATH, with a return from ATH to HNL. The timing did not work for me, and essentially every routing we could devise did not work. Remember, I'm quite inflexible, unfortunately.

I also inquired and was informed that there wasn't any discount on a paid ticket for my daughter. So I decided to just book the HNL/LHR round trip ticket under my daughter's name (Yay!!), pay for my ticket from HNL/LHR (for the miles) for me and worry about the legs to Greece and then to Paris later. I called a travel agent whom I've used in the past, and he's checking with a wholesaler they work with. Although I've already selected the seats for the FF award, if the seat next to it sells in the meantime, I'll just choose different seats when I do eventually book the ticket for me. It will probably be sooner rather than later - I'm just going to play the fare-watching game for a bit.

In all reality I could probably skip the travel agent - but I really like him and he's always been really patient with my obsessive-compulsive travel planning tendencies - he always checks (ad nauseum) these crazy routings I dig up. He also threw in a 15% discount certificate last year when booking my flights to Europe last year.

My next problem is that even though my flight arrives in LHR at 6:55 am, I can't seem to route any flights that get me into Chania any earlier than 9 pm. I just assumed that since Greece is such a big holiday destination for Brits, there would be all these direct LHR - ATH flights. Apparently not so. I guess I'll post another question about that later if I can't figure it out.

Thanks to everyone for their help!

Marilyn

chepar, I think you should be able to fly directly from London to Chania without going via Athens, if that's what you want to do. You might have to change airports in London -- not sure. But Crete is a very popular holiday destination for the British and there are direct flights. Do a little research -- you can probably save some money as well.

rkkwan

Vacationing Brits most likely will be taking easyjet to Greece, not BA or Olympic. Easyjet flies from Gatwick once or twice daily and from Luton daily to ATH.

BA and Olympic each fly 3 time daily LHR-ATH, which is not too bad.

Problem is the timing of ATH-CHQ flights. And remember Crete is actually quite far from the UK, and two time zones ahead. So, getting there at 8pm isn't as outrageous as you think.

There are also a few budget airlines that fly directly into CHQ from certain European cities. But I can't find any from LHR. So, that's not going to get you there much faster.

rkkwan

There are some charter flights from London to Chania non-stop:

First Choice - only Tuesday from Gatwick. Departs LGW 7:15am, so that won't work.

Monarch flies twice a day, also from Gatwick. 7:00am, and 10:15am. I don't think that's enough time to get from LHR to LGW comfortably.

Excel flies LGW-CHQ <b>twice per month</b>. Also early 7am departure. [Yes, that's how crazy these charter airlines are in Europe.]