Off to Italy for 2018

We’re ready to take off on another trip to Italy.  So let’s go over what planning we did.  Last November. Margaret asked about the next trip, and we had the miles for the two of us to go on an American award.  From Boston we could go on the most convenient routing they offered to Rome on their own aircraft, via Philadelphia.

We found a good booking for that, and for the Philadelphia-Rome flight, any seats on the side were "Preferred" with an extra charge, and we got those, in the second row of the Main Cabin.  Then in January, I was given temporary Platinum Pro status, which was to our advantage on the Hawaii trip.  Although I would no longer have the status at the time of the Italy trip, while I had the status I could request Main Cabin Extra seats for these flights, and they would hold unless there was a schedule or aircraft change.  I made these selections, except for trying to get MCE on that overnight transatlantic flight where it would be the bulkhead row only, they warned that there would be no refund for the previously purchased Preferred seats, and I wondered how it would turn out in case of an aircraft change.

While I had the status, there was a schedule change for Boston-Phila. that gave us less connecting time than we'd like.  I sent a Twitter message that got us more time and the MCE bulkhead.  But for the Rome-Phila. return, there was an aircraft change when I no longer had the status, and they no longer had the multiple MCE rows.  They'd put us towards the back, and again we needed to pay extra to get Preferred standard legroom seats towards the front.

So the plan is to spend time in Umbertide, with time in Rome at the start, with Margaret's sister also there,  and end.

That was how I wrote this as we were initially getting ready to leave.  Then something happened with Margaret's health that made us postpone the trip.  It wasn't possible to go on the scheduled date, but it was resolved quickly enough that we could reschedule quickly.  Margaret's sister needed to scramble to make new arrangements when she was in Italy alone, and we wanted to salvage some of the time with her. 

We took advantage of American's policies on award tickets, that a trip between the same two cities could be changed to new dates without penalty.  The problems were that, for the short-notice trip we wanted to take, there were no SAAver awards, but we could choose any American itinerary, using more miles.  For the outbound, connecting via JFK and getting Main Cabin Extra seats for a fee looked worthwhile.  For the return, my initial thought was that we needed to stick to the SAAver number of miles, and the only way to do that, keeping the duration of the trip in the range we wanted, was on British Airways with its high carrier surcharge on awards.  We booked that, with an awkward itinerary with overnight stays in London and Boston.  I'm on the lookout for SAAver awards on American opening up, and we may use the extra miles for another AAnytime award on the return, getting the surcharges refunded.

For now, we're staying in Boston tonight, hoping for an easy trip tomorrow.   On arrival in Rome, we will rent a car to get to Soriano nel Cimino, for a couple of days with Margaret's sister.