Our family of 5 has earned many miles. We need to use them soon! I believe Hawaii is 35,000 mi. and we can only travel in the summer, so we are looking at July 09.
Any suggestions on how I can book for a family of five? I can do two tickets on my own account, yet I'm afraid 2 of my kid's accounts will expire before the deadline. Should I transfer them? I'm new at this one! Any help is appreciated!

There's also a separate Fodor's branch specifically for "airlines" questions, if you don't get your answers here on the United States forum.

Could be tough getting all of you to Hawaii. The airlines have really limited the number of frequent flier (FF) seats and popular destinations fill up fast. We're a family of 4 and have been able to use miles to get all of us to Belize & Costa Rica. For Costa Rica we had to book our travel 8 months in advance. We tried to get all four of us to Paris but couldn't seem to make it work (not that it can't be done). One option is to get 1 or 2 FF tickets and pay for the others. Best of luck!

flyertalk.com is another forum about using air miles.

I have found that calling them direct works better than trying to do it on-line.

I booked FF 1st class from Sacramento to Miami as soon as I could and the www site said no seats but when I called the agent was able to get me exactly what I wanted.

What airline FF program are your miles with? You can check balances and expiration dates online for each account.

There is no reason to allow miles to expire. Usually ANY activity in the account resets the 18 month clock.

On June 24 I used a few American Airlines AAdvantage miles to get a magazine subscription. My miles are now good until 12/24/09.

If you have United MP miles then you can get a newspaper subscription for only 1000 miles. Or you can donate as few as 1000 miles to charity.

We have used our miles for upgrades in some cases and have used them for tickets in others. We also just used some along with cash for tickets. It just kind of depends on where you are going and when you are going. I think Hawaii is tough tho. Can you use them to upgrade or with cash for the Hawaii trip? Good Luck.

Good luck. I don't have many miles with United so I'll use around 500 to get a magazine subscription just to keep them from expiring. Check into what you can do to keep the kids' accounts from expiring. It may be as simple as signing up for some program or buying a magazine subscription.

In addition to above suggestions - it is too early to book for July 09.

Be prepared for disappointment. Hawaii and 5 people are both difficult. Also, airlines are, in practical terms, increasing number of miles needed for routes - for example, while 35,000 is the requirement, you may find you actually need to use 50,000 to get a seat or to avoid a completely absurd routing.

Flexibility in route, destination, date increases your chance of being successful - and I agree, call. Hopefully, miles are not on United, since I have only reached call center India people whose English is limited and are not especially knowledgeable when I have had to call United.

Good luck. Could work, but wait to buy the sunblock and flipflops until you know for sure.

We have used our frequent flier miles twice for our family of 5 to fly to Hawaii, and twice for just the 2 of us. These were non-stop flights from Atlanta. We've also all 5 flown to Alaska and the Caribbean on frequent flier miles.

If these are Delta miles, you can only book 330 days ahead of when you want to fly. (So you could book in August 2008 for flights in July 2009).

If you don't see the flights when you first look, keep looking! The flight availability changes every day. Call to ask the agent re expiration of miles.

I agree with Samsaf that the availability changes everyday so you have to keep looking every few days. Good Luck!!

I just took a look for United award availability for LAX-HNL for July 22 - Aug 5 THIS YEAR.

Here is award seat availability on each of the nonstop LAX-HNL flights on those days (9 means "9 or more"):

Outbound, Economy: 0,0,5,9,9
Outbound, First Class: 9,9,9,0,8
Inbound, Economy: 9,0,9,9
Inbound, First Class: 0,0,9,9

I picked random dates and didn't look at connections via SFO from LAX. Your trip might originate elsewhere, but in addition to connecting at LAX you would be able to connect to up to 4 additional flights on those days from SFO.

Economy is 35,000 miles and first is 75,000 miles. If you had enough miles then there is availability for at least 17 of your closest friends to HNL that day in 1st class and 20 or so lesser friends in coach.

This info is from united dot com.

My husband travels a lot for business. We have used FF miles for 4 trips to Europe. However, we always book 1 year in advance. It usually takes several phone calls directly to the airline to get the tickets we want (or about). We use United Airlines and the agent told us to always call and not book it online. We are leaving in 2 weeks for Europe using FF miles. I booked our trip last August. The other key is that you need to be pretty flexible when you leave and come back. Also, don't stick to only one airport from your home town. Check several airports that are close to you. We have 5 major airports near us that we check on. Good luck

Just call in. Do NOT try to use the online system, it sucks.

-------------
www.cats-tell.com

The online system works fine. But it is limited to United flights.

The reason to call is to find availability on partner airlines. This is important for an award to Europe (Lufthansa, Swiss, TAP, Austrian, SAS, bmi, LOT, Turkish, and a couple more) or to Asia (ANA, Singapore, Thai, Air China, Air Canada, and a couple more).

But for Hawaii if you use United miles you would fly on United or USAir. Unless I made some big mistake in looking for award seats it is absolutely a fact that there is good availability on United, for several pax to Hawaii and they can be booked on their website and it doesn't have to be a year in advance.

But I wouldn't count on the website as the final word on availability on United. I doubt that an agent would find seats on United flights that I couldn't book online, but I would hold out hope.

When did EgyptAir join Star Alliance?

I had been using them for free flights but, I was just notified that my carrier is going to start charging for "free" flights - a fuel surcharge.

Not the usual and understandable (well somewhat) costs imposed by the government, but for the costs of flying the plane.

Do I hear a multibillion dollar a year industry of selling frequent flier points imploding?