Posts from me are going to be a bit lighter over the next week as I continue my dads round the world surprise birthday trip. As you may (or may not) know, I also have a points consulting service, whereby we help people redeem their airline miles. I have several colleagues working with me, and…
Continue reading: How To Book Awards From Multiple Accounts
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
@ TonyM -- 2016 is a long ways away, so hopefully you can build up your balances so the redemption is not quite so complicated!
@Lantean It's pretty obvious to me.Since they are imaginary anyway, you get to imagine them however you wish. If the reader is a gay guy, Chris is a guy. If the reader is straight, of either sex, Chris is a girl. If the reader is a gay woman, both Chris and Sam (Samantha) are female. 🙂
I'm pretty sure Chris and Sam are both women. Sam is an excellent snowboarder and while Chris is a champion surfer she's lived most of her life in Hawaii so she's hardly even seen snow but she'll pick it up quickly. She's also very much looking forward to her first winter in NYC, especially Christmas - even though she's not a practicing Christian she enjoys celebrating the festive holiday.
It's all in there if you read between the lines
I just did that exact scenario. Booking hubby and I to Nuremberg via Amsterdam on KLM and then our return from Linate to IAD via Brussels on Brussels Airlines. We used the Membership reward points for the outbound and our UR points transferred to United for our inbound.
I think this is a great article, but it also highlights my concerns about over-diversification with points/miles accumulation. I am a casual traveler only, and only fly 2-3 times a year. I live near DFW, so I mainly fly AA. For the same reason, I have AA Citi personal and business cards to rack up AA miles. However, after reading this post and several of Ben's other posts on miles, I'm starting to wonder if that's the best strategy. What point/mile strategy would you recommend for casual travelers? Thanks!
@ Matt -- Hahahahaha! Thank you, this might be my favorite comment on this blog ever. 😀
@ Matt S. -- Thanks! I generally find that casual travelers are the people that most benefit from flexible points currencies and credit cards. It's super easy to earn miles from methods other than flying nowadays, so you might as well.
Depending on where you're hoping to travel, you might want to branch out into Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, or SPG points. Unless you're spending a ton on American the SPG cards are actually more lucrative for earning AAdvantage miles anyways, so that might be a good option if you're feeling cautious.
But that's a great, great question. Maybe between us we can do a lengthier post on that.
Well I had similar challenge in January 2013 when I booked the China trip for my family of five for Christmas/New Year 2013. It wasn't easy finding 5 first class seats on Cathay SFO to HKG, my husband and I split up with the kids over two separate days. Thankfully the miles were coming out of my account and his account, not the kids. But the return flight was not so easy. The miles were in each of the five accounts, so we had five separate reservations, even though I booked it over the phone and told AA to link them, somehow they managed to leave my teenage daughter out. So when the flight was delayed by 6 hours on departure date, the system automatically rebooked 4 of us on the next day flight, but left my teenage daughter in Shanghai alone for another 24 hours after our departure! Guess the computer system doesn't look at birthdays? And the fact that she has the same last name as four other passengers on the flight in first class as well? Took a lot of work but we all ended up with our original (but delayed) flight and originally seats!
@ Sharon -- Wow! That is quite the booking, and a perfect example! Thanks for sharing, and glad it all worked out.
Nice! I currently have me and my mom's winter trip booked with a combo of LM, UA, BA miles. Total headache but satisfying to put all the pieces together in a way that works.
Also, I'm thoroughly enjoying all your posts. Please consider continuing to contribute long after the round birthday trip 😉
@ Cheryl -- Wow! Where are you heading?
And thanks so much -- we'll certainly think about it. I'm having fun, but this blogging thing is harder than it looks.
I'm sure it takes a lot of time and thought to not only make it fluid and coherent but also interesting for all of us. As much as I love reading about Ben's aspirational travel, I equally enjoy hearing about the sometimes darker/stranger/unknown or forgotten aspects of using miles - something you guys have highlighted nicely lately.
I'm flying SXM-MIA-JFK-VIE (for lunch and mozartkugeln ;)) -PEK-SIN (destination) - KUL-HKG-ZRH-WAW(stop)-VIE-JFK-MIA-SXM on a combo of OS and LX sprinkled with OW carriers for positioning and other short hops.
Echoing cheryls comment, have really enjoyed your posts Tiffany. Hope to see more from you.
Great post. Thanks! Last year I booked on Delta using both DL and AF flights. Stopover in Paris for 10 days then on to Joburg, then back to US (total of 6 flights). We are a family of 5 and were on 4 PNRs b/c all had miles to burn. I was very nervous about putting my 11 and 14 year olds on individual PNRs (I put 5 year old on mine), but we had no choice b/c wanted to go business class and the miles were all over our accounts. DL did link for me (and I had to call in to ticket minors but they waived the $25 fee for us all). In the end, it was totally fine, not even a delay on a single flight. I did stay on top of flight status, to be safe, but I would not hesitate to do it again on separate PNRs for us. Even for my youngest. No airline is going to have a child flying alone like that, so they'll figure out something.
Great post. Looks like I'm doing things right then. This year I helped my parents book a trip from BOG to BKK. They wanted to fly business class. My mom had enough miles on United for a roundtrip. My dad had enough miles on LifeMiles for one-way and had some other miles on United, but not enough for the one-way. Thank goodness, he had enough UR points so he could transfer them to United. Now with all the miles in place, I just needed to find the exact routing on the United and LifeMiles website. I was looking every single day. Then one night, around 1am, it showed up and I booked the flights. Thankfully, there weren't any changes by the airlines. My parents had the time of their life.
Love the insights, Tiffany. Having done a few awards now for family I can totally appreciate how much work it is. I was dead set against guest contributors but these award redemption posts are awesome. I would've never thought to keep 2 outbounds on 1 PNR rather than book 1 roundtrip and 2 oneways, but it makes perfect sense.
@ Cheryl -- Oh goodness! I can't even imagine how much work that must have taken to put together!! Very impressive!
@ Tiffany -- A very informative series of posts! I really hope you continue to do more posts, especially if you can sprinkle in some irreverent ones like your Lufthansa one 🙂 BTW, do you find that SQ backtracking rules match Star Alliance route map? They wouldn't let me book IAH-DME-ZRH (not shown on the map when searching IAH-ZRH) but IAH-DME-VIE worked fine (listed on the map for IAH-VIE). Vienna route was my first choice anyhow so didn't try pressing them on Zurich.