Washington DC to Greece

[minamhere]

My girlfriend and I are trying to go to Greece next year. We are very flexible on the dates, so any advice on when to go is greatly appreciated. Ballpark, we're looking at any time between May and September. Obviously, we'd like to go when the weather and water are nice, but it sounds like July/August are super crowded and hot...

We live in Northern Virginia, so we can start from IAD, DCA, or BWI. We have no real preference on airline. and can position somewhere else if needed. I don't mind an extra layover if there's a nice lounge we can use (Priority Pass from Prestige, Amex, or actual carrier lounge are options).

It looks like we have a few options to do Air France (via CDG) in Business class (transfer to Air France, Delta, or Korean). Korean has the best "price" at 80k roundtrip/person (vs 125k roundtrip using AF or DL miles). But it sounds like the process to book partner awards on Korean is a bit cumbersome and sounds like we will each need to make our own reservations, as we aren't immediate family members. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to do this?

Is it easy enough to call Korean and make the reservation on the phone?
What about award availability? It looks like Delta's availability on AF is excellent, even better than AF itself. Is that real? Since I can't search Korean online, will their availability look more like AF or DL?
The taxes and surcharges seem much higher when booking with AF directly, vs DL. What kind of taxes would I be looking at with Korean?

Is there a better way to get there that I'm missing? I'm not stuck on Air France at all, if there's another airline that would be easier, I'm definitely interested. I'd love to go Business or First, but I'm open to any suggestions for the best way to do this.

Thanks!

My Points:
Amex MR: ~210k
Citi TYP: ~130k
Chase UR: ~80k
Starwood: ~38k
United: ~23k
Southwest: ~14k
AA: ~8k

Her Points:
Chase UR: ~50k (I know we'll need to MS some points here if we're going to transfer them to Korean for her!)
Citi TYP: ~30k
(Amex MR: ~50k soon)
(SPG: ~28k soon)

 

[Matt S NYC]

You might consider using Star Alliance by transferring MR to Aeroplan. I see some business availability through Copenhagen during the time period you are looking at. Using Aeroplan to fly to Europe 2 would cost 105k points per person + some taxes. Just note, Aeroplan is devaluing their program in December, so if you want to go that route, try to do it before the devaluation.

I also see a good deal of economy saver awards on United.com which you could book for 60k United points per person RT with no fees. For that you'd probably want to transfer UR into your United account to augment your 23k balance.

BTW, I used United.com's search engine to quickly come up with availability for the route. I always use Star Alliance to Europe (although I prefer to get last minute Lufthansa flights as they open up with 2 weeks of departure) and am very happy with it.

 

[minamhere]

Thanks. I've definitely looked at Star Alliance, and found lots of availability outbound, but return was very limited. I couldn't get the days to match up without turning a ~10 day trip into 15-17 days. While I'd love that, my girlfriend can't take enough days off to make that work.

As I've been looking, I got worried that June would still be too cold in the water, so I think I need to try for the mid/late summer. Of course, by going later, I run into peak Europe travel time... If I try for July or August, I can't even find economy saver awards on the way back (until very end of August).