Questions and Answers

Around September 16 or 17 I need 2 1-way tickets from Madrid to SFO. Economy is fine. I have 200,000 Amex miles but I can’t seem to gain the confidence to transfer them to Iberia, which takes a week, by which time there may be no free tickets available. What should I do? I will also fly SFO to London with the same passenger in the next few months but I haven’t yet entered a frequent flyer mile number for that. I do have American Airlines points, but not many. And maybe these issues aren’t related? Thanks.

what about Aeroplan? Amex transfers to Aeroplan are instant. MAD-SFO is 60k miles plus ~$100 in taxes per person. Its in UA Economy with a connection though.

Aeroplan also charges the same 60k miles for SFO-LHR if you can find United economy award space and the taxes are only ~$12 per person. It’d also be on a B789, if your travel date is between April 5th and May 24th

David, I don’t suppose you’d have 5 minutes for a quick phone call? I’m pretty hopeless and would be respectful of your time. I would travel in September. Also, would this be 60k each, or 60k per ticket?

What questions do you have? I’ll try to answer them here, that way others can provide some insight or corrections if I make any errors

It’s worth mentioning that if you have some flexibility, Aeroplan charges just 55,000 miles per person for the one-way in business class.

Turkish has space available on their nonstop on the 16th from Istanbul to San Francisco, so there wouldn’t be any fuel surcharges.

The limitation is that the timings of flights between Madrid and Istanbul don’t look great, but if you’re interested in going the previous day and either taking a red-eye or enjoying some time in Istanbul it looks doable.