How to use air miles

[Mirko Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Mirko]

I have 600K+ air miles on American Express. I would like to use them before I die (I'm 61).

Is there an easy way to figure out how I can use my air miles. AMEX is not much help as they direct you to airline websites and they are not easy to navigate. I spent some time last summer figuring some of this out, but I figure there must be an easier way. We would like to go to Europe, but we're pretty flexible as to other places. I would just like to use up those miles. I am an educator so I get most of the summer off, as well as a couple of other weeks per year.

Thanks in advance,

Mirko

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

Since you want to go in high season you're gonna have to book about 360 days out. With some planning it's doable to use up all those miles. You could even splurge and go first class.

You might want to hang out at flyertalk.com. They're truly the air rewards pros who can help you get the most out of this pot of gold you've got accumulated here. Of course you'll need somewhere to stay once you fly there so hang out here and we'll help you get that too.

[javanite Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close javanite]

Which airport do you want to fly out of? Where in Europe would you like to go?

You need to go to each potential airline's site and determine the earliest date you can book with miles. On some it is 330 or 331 days in advance. You need to reserve your ticket(s) on the very first day possible. So figure out that date now, and mark your calendar.

In the meantime, do a test booking with any dates that you do see available, so you become familiar with the process. By checking frequently, you'll see how quickly the dates are booked up.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Since you want to go to Europe, I would avoid putting those miles on Delta like the plague. Delta has a reputation for greatly inflating the number of miles they demand for international reservations.

I would probably go with a carrier in Star Alliance. Right now that would be CO, but they are merging into United. United has a problem with Star Net blocking if you are looking for a leg on their alliance partners, but that is a hit or miss proposition. Some use US Airways but then book their flights on partners, as US Airways availibility can be as bad as Delta but you can at least use your miles at reasonable levels on their partners, and US Airways does not do Star Net blocking. One hopeful sign for the future of the merged CO /UA is that it is CO's execs who are running the merger, so hopefully they will run their merged ff program like CO without Star Net blocking. We will have to wait and see on that one, however.

AA is another option that has decent availibility at reasonable levels. For travel to Europe, if you are going shoulder season, they even have reducedmilage requirements for part of shoulder season, 40K RT, rather than the 60K in summer.

[Matthewop Banned Find all posts View Profile Close Matthewop]

what is the better shorter way to get there?

[grest Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close grest]

But be careful....we scheduled 360 days out, but due to family concerns we had to cancel. It cost us $150 per person to cancel those tickets!

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

I have never had luck using my FF miles. Seemed I could never get a flight where I wanted to go. So I finally just started to use them to upgrade to first class. Didn't get free flight but boy that first class was nice way to travel...