Summer trip planning continues

For my summer Paris-Italy trip it's still uncertain if my parents can get a flight award to join me. I'll be making a reservation using Hilton Hhonors points for the night of my arrival in Rome before their point devaluation. One issue is that I see a scenario where my parents could arrive in the morning two days later, in which place I'd have a 2-night stay at the Hilton. If I book two nights at the current point cost and reduce it to one night after the point change, that night would be charged at the new higher point cost. A solution will be to book as two one-night stays, and I'd just cancel the second stay if I don't use it, but there are some reports that Hilton combines successive night stays into one reservation. Anyway, anyone knowing of an occasion when they'll want to use an Hhonors award in the next year should make the reservation before Jan. 15, 2010. More information is at http://hhonors1.hilton.com/en_US/hh/landing/RewardFAQ/index.do

My main occasion to update this blog is when I get notified of schedule changes in my flights. On my return, the Rome-Detroit flight was scheduled for 12.45 p.m., a time that, if I'm on my own, would allow me to stay in Umbertide up to that morning. Now it's been changed to 10.40 a.m., so that I'll probably need to be in Rome the night before, which I may well want to do in any case. The former time was rather late for transatlantic departures, and the changed time means checking in at a peak time. The flight is still listed as operated by Northwest, which will probably be entirely merged into Delta by then, so who knows what schedule changes can still be expected.