Planning trip to England this summer

[Linda marshall]

Before I enlist the help of a reward travel planner, I thought I would post my itinerary and see what kind of feedback I might get from the group.

I'm planning a 2 week trip to England with my 15 year old son sometime this summer. Our dates are very flexible, but preferably travelling early to mid summer (not august if possible).

We will be flying out of PDX. I assume we would fly into London, but we plan to travel throughout England and Scotland, so other airports are an option.

Ideally, if we can swing it, it would be nice to fly business/first class. It’s always nice to fly direct, but I will have the SW CP next month and so can use that to get to another airport if needed.

My current CC and reward points are as follows.
Airlines:
Alaska 57857
AAdvantage 82637(+50-65K exp.next month)
Southwest 114K

Ultimate Rewards 261,900
chase Ink, Freedom, Sapphire (husband's acct)

Hotels:
Hilton (Chase Visa) 127702
Hilton (Amex) 50K pending min spend
Hyatt 34261


For this trip, I would like to use AmericanAirlines miles if possible (and can earn more as needed). Purchasing the ticket before the values change. Since I generally fly SW/Alaska, this trip seems to be the best use of my AA miles. Also, I’m hoping to save UR/Hyatt miles for a trip to Puerto Vallarta in the fall. I may also be using UR miles for a family trip to SanDiego for spring break (April). I was able to find the hotel where we are going on the Chase website, I’m still trying to determine if it is a good idea to use miles or pay with CC and earn miles for that trip. One of my fears is having a bunch of UR miles sitting in an account and having Chase close me down for some reason and then losing all the miles. From this perspective it seems safer to use them than to let them just sit there.


Thanks for your thoughts and any help you can offer!

 

[dukerau]

Direct only leaves you with BA, so unless you plan on paying huge fuel surcharges, you'll be looking at 1 connection, minimum.

If you want to try to use AA miles, keep Iberia in mind, though that would require 2 stops (once in the US, once in MAD).

You'll save a few hundred dollars by flying into LHR and out of DUB if you're including Ireland in your trip due to avoiding UK departure tax.

 

[mbo_nc]

Now would definitely be a good time to use those AA miles if you can find availability. For trips booked on or after March 22, business class to Europe is going up from 50k to 57.5k, and first class to Europe is going up from 62.5k to 85k. Definitely try to avoid BA (surcharges). Iberia, Finnair, and Airberlin are options to keep in mind (I believe that all three are bookable via AA.com, but don't quote me on that) although I do not know anything about their respective business class products.

 

[niehaubs]

July 25th (for example) shows AA first class to LHR from PDX with a couple stops (DFW and MIA) but no BA flights.
AA 1 stop options show up for 50K Alaska miles for the same day, but those flights do not show up as options for AA redemption.

I'm not sure how it all works. It seems like if it is available to book on Alaska for 50K in first class with 1 stop, that the same flight would be available even if for 62.5K on AA, but alas, it is not.

A return on August 6th from Manchester on AA.com shows 50k business class on all AA flights, 1 stop to PDX.

I know that does not meet the "early summer, not August requirement", but there are options.