Questions and Answers

Going to Europe next fall and will end up in Budapest. Trying to find a saver-level business class flight back to ORD for my friend that does not involve 2 stops, an overnight and preferably not transiting LHR. Have AA and UA miles to spend.

It seems that in order to use saver-level UA miles one needs to position to an airport UA serves and there aren’t (award) flights leaving BUD early enough to do that.

With AA miles, even routing via LHR, it seems there are no LHR-ORD non-stops (though my actual date hasn’t opened yet – I’m looking one week earlier on the same day of the week).

Even with the 2-stop *A flights it looks like she’d need to leave the night before she wants to get home and spend the night somewhere along the way.

Anybody got any suggestions? I’ve looked at AB & IB but neither of those fly to BUD.

Do we think something more direct might open up later?

Budapest Airport is really a wasteland since Malév went under, and no one has really stepped in to fill the service gap. That’s the main issue here.

I would look at *A partners — maybe connections in Munich, Brussels or Istanbul? Otherwise Austrian is likely to release space within 90 days of departure.

I’m not seeing any availability on Turkish (in J) at the moment but maybe it’ll open up later?

The problem with many of the connections is that the flight leaves too late out of BUD to catch a morning TATL flight, thus causing her to have to spend the night somewhere along the way. We’ll keep looking and crossing our fingers but thanks for the info.

I’ll be using LH miles and see plenty of availability but hate to book something until I know for sure when she’ll be leaving.

Don’t IcelandAir have 2 daily out of BUD? If you have any Alaskan miles of course.

Are you seeing any space on LOT true WAW? Seem to have 2 daily BUD-WAW-ORD

[USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER]
What do you think the chances are MidSouthSkier could use AA miles for AerLingus BUD-DUB-ORD by next fall?

Sadly, nothing shown on LOT. Not for either leg.

EI is not showing any non-stop TATL space using ba.com or in Expert Flyer. I think the BUD-DUB route may be seasonal and late October is after the season?

I’ll do some more digging. Per Wikipedia UA flies to Brussels, Frankfurt and Munich so you’d think one of those routes would have a spot available on UA metal.

I’m thinking she’s going to have to do a 2-stop whether she wants to or not.

Finding payed tickets on EI BUD-DUB-ORD on Oct 31 so don’t seems to be seasonal, but not sure if the flight is operated every day.

Well then I’ll keep an eye out on that route for sure and set some alerts in EF.

Thanks!

Edit: the Aer Lingus website is not even showing seats for sale on the 31st yet. So maybe that’s a good sign that something will open up eventually!

Ah yes, that might be it.

I found the EI flight true a OTA, but when I click on the link to EI website it just starts to load with a logo and goes nowhere. Flights might be fully loaded yet.

The flight on Turkish opened up so we’ve got her booked on that. Thanks everyone for your input!