Flight Advice to Italy

[Josh F]

Just looking to get some thoughts on award travel. Looking to fly 2 people out to Italy sometime between Oct 12-16 and return 10 days later. We would be flying in/out of ROC (or BUF/SYR) and into FCO and out of VCE.

We have a lot of AA points (#1 preference) along with a lot of UR points. We'd prefer to fly out Business since it's a trip for our 10 year anniversary and are fine returning in coach. However, I'm really not seeing anything great on the AA/UR end (all like BUF-ORD-LHR-FCO with YQ around $300/pp). There's also Iberia which I understand has lesser YQ so I could do (paid) ROC/BUF-BOS then (award) BOS-MAD-FCO. While I do have enough AA points for the AA Anytime Business it seems like 110K points each is just too steep.

The only thing I'm seeing that looks promising, is some Delta/Al Italia flights (ROC-JFK-FCO), I'm a bit short on Delta points, but would have enough for 2 biz tix with only 1 CC sign up (I'm seeing availability at 62.5K/pp). I'm leaning towards that option, anyone have any other thoughts?

 

[jlang]

Just looking to get some thoughts on award travel. Looking to fly 2 people out to Italy sometime between Oct 12-16 and return 10 days later. We would be flying in/out of ROC (or BUF/SYR) and into FCO and out of VCE.

We have a lot of AA points (#1 preference) along with a lot of UR points. We'd prefer to fly out Business since it's a trip for our 10 year anniversary and are fine returning in coach. However, I'm really not seeing anything great on the AA/UR end (all like BUF-ORD-LHR-FCO with YQ around $300/pp). There's also Iberia which I understand has lesser YQ so I could do (paid) ROC/BUF-BOS then (award) BOS-MAD-FCO. While I do have enough AA points for the AA Anytime Business it seems like 110K points each is just too steep.

The only thing I'm seeing that looks promising, is some Delta/Al Italia flights (ROC-JFK-FCO), I'm a bit short on Delta points, but would have enough for 2 biz tix with only 1 CC sign up (I'm seeing availability at 62.5K/pp). I'm leaning towards that option, anyone have any other thoughts?

There's BUF-BOS availability for 2 ppl on 10/11 and 10/12 - granted in coach, but its not that long of a flight... from there you hope the Iberia flight you mentioned.

I live in BUF, and I find that flying from YYZ is great - tons more availability, however if you leave further east of BUF, it may not be a drive you want to make. but worth consideration as well

 

[Josh F]

There's BUF-BOS availability for 2 ppl on 10/11 and 10/12 - granted in coach, but its not that long of a flight... from there you hope the Iberia flight you mentioned.

I live in BUF, and I find that flying from YYZ is great - tons more availability, however if you leave further east of BUF, it may not be a drive you want to make. but worth consideration as well

Thanks for the reply. I'm in ROC and we have NEXUS, so I don't mind flying out of YYZ - we flew YYZ-LHR-DUB-YYZ this summer and had 4 Economy Saver Seats on Air Canada, so no YQ. The problem with AA, unless I'm missing something is everything YYZ-FCO is flown through LHR on BA metal. For something good on YYZ, I'm all for it!

Up until now I've flown coach exclusively, so I don't mind coach to BOS. However, I'm only seeing reasonable availability at the AA Anytime level and I'm guessing you can't mix Anytime (BUF-BOS) and Saver (BOS-MAD-FCO) - so it would be 2 separate awards? The other thing I'm not crazy about is the Iberia flight gets in at 06:25 (so that's like 00:25) - it seems like a bad arrival time for a red-eye, maybe it's just me?

 

[jlang]

I definitely see 2 seats, sAAver Y from BUF-BOS on 10/12, arriving in time for you to make the redeye... there's also coach availability from YYZ-BOS on 10/12... but that just seems like an extra long drive for nothing (as the BUF flight is there)

With YYZ flights what I typically try to do is see where the transatlantic space is, so i'd try to see if there are seats on Iberia to JFK, ORD, etc. once I find them, i'd check to see on AA.com what sAAver seats are available from YYZ to that place. have you had luck finding transatlantic flights to places other then then boston?

FWIW, I love early landing red-eyes... but that could just be me

Thanks for the reply. I'm in ROC and we have NEXUS, so I don't mind flying out of YYZ - we flew YYZ-LHR-DUB-YYZ this summer and had 4 Economy Saver Seats on Air Canada, so no YQ. The problem with AA, unless I'm missing something is everything YYZ-FCO is flown through LHR on BA metal. For something good on YYZ, I'm all for it!

Up until now I've flown coach exclusively, so I don't mind coach to BOS. However, I'm only seeing reasonable availability at the AA Anytime level and I'm guessing you can't mix Anytime (BUF-BOS) and Saver (BOS-MAD-FCO) - so it would be 2 separate awards? The other thing I'm not crazy about is the Iberia flight gets in at 06:25 (so that's like 00:25) - it seems like a bad arrival time for a red-eye, maybe it's just me?

 

[Josh F]

I definitely see 2 seats, sAAver Y from BUF-BOS on 10/12, arriving in time for you to make the redeye... there's also coach availability from YYZ-BOS on 10/12... but that just seems like an extra long drive for nothing (as the BUF flight is there)

With YYZ flights what I typically try to do is see where the transatlantic space is, so i'd try to see if there are seats on Iberia to JFK, ORD, etc. once I find them, i'd check to see on AA.com what sAAver seats are available from YYZ to that place. have you had luck finding transatlantic flights to places other then then boston?

FWIW, I love early landing red-eyes... but that could just be me

The BUF-BOS is a 6:20 AM - 11:54 AM flight via CLT, then a 6 hour layover until BOS-MAD, I'd rather shell out the $100/pp for the direct flight later in the day. I couldn't find any direct trans-atlantic space from ORD, which would be the best. Couldn't find JFK either, although that's not great, since there's no one-world partners that get me direct to NYC.

I've been looking for direct transatlantic on iberia/aa, but BOS is the only one that has something in biz at that time. Thanks for the advice.

 

[m124]

I know OP said AA/UR, but if they had Delta miles, there are lots of days in October for ROC-FCO with 1-stop at 62,500 miles in business.

 

[Josh F]

I know OP said AA/UR, but if they had Delta miles, there are lots of days in October for ROC-FCO with 1-stop at 62,500 miles in business.

Yeah, I have enough miles with 1 CC sign-up, so I'm leaning in that direction. I'd much rather blow AA miles since I have more than enough.