Planning the spring 2023 trip: really, another cruise?

 We got home in November 2022 with good thoughts about our river cruise experience, and the benefits of becoming repeat customers with Uniworld were also appealing.  There was one offer that expired the day after our return, too soon to think about doing this.  

Just a little later, there was another sale offer for the Bordeaux cruise, which is where I was focused, an area of France where I haven't been and has been of interest to me.  As I remember, I initiated a booking on the budget deck and it was showing sold out, but I contacted them and they got us a cabin.

As we booked the cruise, it was uncertain what the rest of the trip would be.  First, for the flight over, I was planning to convert credit card points to airline miles.  Among Chase's partners, being based in the U.S. for a transatlantic trip, I think first of United, but as their transatlantic miles price is usually over 30,000 miles each way, I was finding better deals on Europe-based partners.  I first looked at Aer Lingus to go from Boston to Bordeaux via Dublin, but it became clear that there could be problems being on an island and something going wrong with the one flight to Bordeaux.

Seeing that Air France via Paris would be better, it gradually came to be that we could spend about a week in Paris before the cruise.  Even after using IHG points for the stay in Amsterdam, the leftover points, annual free nights for having two credit cards with them, and a 10% rebate of the Amsterdam points meant that we'd have a free Paris stay just by buying a small number of points at the cost of less than a night.  We'd be convenient to Gare Montparnasse, where we could experience the TGV train to Bordeaux.

On the Flying Blue program, a one-way Boston-Paris flight could be had for 17K miles; I think it helps that Boston is in a lower-distance mile band.  There was also a bonus for converting American Express Membership Rewards. (I should also note that there's a money component to award booking, larger than with U.S.-based airlines.) I started the booking, and with a confirmation code there was an error message that I needed to call.  I understand that this is common with award bookings on points just transferred from another program, an effort to watch for fraud.  It took a few calls, some cut off, but the outbound was booked.

I was still thinking in terms of some time in Italy after the Bordeaux cruise, but it came to be that we didn't want to be away for so long, and there weren't great options for getting from Bordeaux to Rome or another Italian gateway.  We finally decided just to return home after the cruise, a connection from Bordeaux via Paris, and I completed that reward booking with a similar need to call.

In both directions, we were booked on the later of Air France's two flights on the route.  In late December, I got a notice that our flights had been changed: those flights were taken off the schedule for those days.  We were on the earlier flights, and that's how the outbound stayed, but a few days later I got an email in Spanish with a link to AF's Mexican site saying the original flight was cancelled, and not showing us having anything.  The originally rebooked flights were still on the timetable, and I made a call that got that reinstated.  There was another notice changing our flight out of Bordeaux to something still earlier, and the cruise line will probably want us up really early for their transfer to the airport.  Oh, and our bid for an upgraded stateroom was approved, much closer to the cruise start than it was last time.

Going over, our flight arrival is set for 6 a.m., and I was able to add an IHG free night so our room is booked for the previous night and we can have it ready on arrival.  We look forward to interesting times, having seen about the ongoing protests in Paris, apparently generally not affecting travelers all that much, and we don't have too much of an agenda.

But back to the plans to go to Italy: we're looking for a trip there in September.  Margaret has been looking to take Business Class when possible; I look at Flying Blue's Promo Rewards every month, and I understood I was seeing a good deal out of Montreal, which is about the same distance as Boston for us.  With a bonus for converting Chase points to Flying Blue, I booked a September trip in Business going over and Premium Economy on the return, looking good even though there is a notable monetary component to the booking.  I later learned that these didn't meet the definition of Promo Rewards; they're the low end of the dynamic rewards pricing, but we'll make the best of it.  Also, I completed the booking, after sleeping on it for a night, on the day that Flying Blue started charging for seat assignments on awards, but then they got the system fixed so they didn't charge on North American routes.

Preparing for Italy 2019

It seems to have become an annual trip to Italy, and September is a good time to go.  For booking the flights, I was looking at new credit card bonuses for British Airways and Iberia, where the Avios (points) can be transferred between the two programs.  Since we would avoid flying on BA awards, where the fees on award trips could make it pointless to consider it a free trip, I went ahead and got the Iberia card.

I set up the Iberia Avios account before getting the card, because it needed to be open a certain amount of time before points could be transferred.  When I was ready to transfer my orphan BA points, I ran into trouble online, called BA for help, when they asked for my date of birth I gave it and they said it was wrong, but then agreed to the transfer.  I looked at my Iberia profile and saw they had my date off by a year.  I hear bad things about Iberia customer service, but I learned that I could email a scan of my passport to correct the date, and it eventually got fixed.  When the BA site asks for my date of birth, it won't take the correct one or the one off by a year, so I'm locked out and will need to resolve it if I need to use their program in the future.

In the meantime, Norwegian Air announced non-stop flights between Boston and Rome.  I was thinking it would be nice to fly with them on their low one-way fare, and the other way on Iberia Avios.  Just as the service was announced, word was coming out of more financial woes for Norwegian, and questions of how long they would continue to operate.

Since we were ready to make the booking on getting the first credit card bonus in February, I thought we might as well book the whole trip on Iberia.  They offer a range of Avios + money options, which was what we would need to use.  What caught my eye was Premium Economy on Iberia's partner LEVEL from Boston to Barcelona, then Vueling from Barcelona to Rome.  The seat assignments would need to be arranged by phone to Iberia, which worried me because of their service reputation, but it went well with us getting row 1 on the transatlantic segments.  The Vueling assignments in regular seats eventually showed up on their own.  It's nice to be in seats better than regular Economy, and Margaret likes row 1; it's nice to have the slightly better seats on the long flights, although our expectations won't be too great.  The cost was around $600 per person, and another level of the credit card's opening bonus has posted for a future trip.

Now as we're getting ready to go, I learned that there are ground workers' strikes at Barcelona airport last weekend and the weekend we're flying.  As I post this, it appears that the strike has been cancelled.  Still, since Norwegian is still operating the flight to Rome, I can think about whether that option would have been preferable.

Margaret's sister Emily is to arrive a week later; she waited until later to book and got Norwegian's Oakland-Rome non-stop.  As our plan stands now, we'll have one night in Rome, pick up a rental car to get to Umbertide, and try to give some attention to our house.  In the middle of our time, we'll all have a few days in Rome, and later we'll go to Emily's timeshare in Soriano nel Cimino.  Then Margaret and I are to have a couple of final days in Rome.  Our return flight has a long layover in Barcelona, which should let us go into the city for lunch.

As this planning has been happening, I won a Slow Europe prize and selected a week on Hvar Island in Croatia.   We're thinking of it in conjunction with Italy next spring, so there's a lot to think about in how to make that work.

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.

Sadness, with more changes of plans

On January 10, 2016, my mother died following a stroke that she had over the Christmas period.  It is difficult to think of writing a full tribute, but it's impossible to measure the full scope of her influence on my life as a traveler.  Her interest in living in Europe meant that I spent formative years there.  My quick picking up of skills in practical matters such as navigation and transportation schedules complemented her talents in showing appreciation of the beauty of the places and picking up on local culture.  Margaret and I will look at our upcoming trip as a tribute to her as we revisit places where I lived with her.  In particular the trip to Grimaud will be interesting as I go back after so long and have conflicted views of my year there at 13.

So we've seen the consequences of making a booking so long in advance, that we continued to be notified of flight schedule changes.   Seeing where I left off in the last post on the flight changes.  In toying around with airfare sites as I often do, I found that the Kansas City-Miami flight was back on the schedule for our date of travel.  I called to see if we could get changed back to that, our original booking, regardless of SAAver award availability.  This agent was very helpful, calling another department to force a second award seat on the Miami-Milan flight, and it looked like a good booking for a comfortable trip.

Then the next day, I got an email of a new schedule change:  the flight from Miami would leave at 5.30 p.m. instead of 2.20, giving us seven hours in Miami.  We could take advantage of that with an outing to South Beach, but the later arrival in Milan would also be something of a concern in how we would get to Genoa.

Go ahead a couple of more months, and on the evening of my mother's death the airline sent a new email:  KC-Miami was off the schedule again, and they had us booked via Miami with a connection at Dallas/Fort Worth that was too short for comfort.  While trying to deal with getting back into routine things, I had to consider what effort I could make to get the least bad rebooking, which be going back to the option via Washington and the change of New York airports.  Then award availability turned up on the KC-LaGuardia flight, where service will just be starting two weeks before then.  I got that booking changed:  we'll go via New York, a change of airports but not an extra stop.

We'll have 7.5 hours to make the airport change.  We may just spend the time from getting to JFK in their Admirals Club, considering the hassle and transportation costs of leaving the airport, even for lunch within Queens.

We've also completed bookings at an apartment rental in Genoa, and a B&B in Grimaud, the limited option of staying in the village rather than the country or the faux fishing village of Port Grimaud.  The other thing that threw us for a loop was that I discovered that the Intercontinental Hotel de la Ville in Rome, where we were going to spend our last night on a program free night, would be closing down before we got there.  I was able to change that free night to the Indigo on via Giulia, in the area where Margaret and I went to school, so that should be nice.  At the time that I understand that people with reservations were notified of the closing, I couldn't have gotten that award night.  It has paid to keep looking at travel sites and boards.

Flight plan changes, of course

I was glad we had our trip to Europe booked on an award, but I still wanted to see if we could get onto preferable flights.  I was taking advantage of the rule that, if there is SAAver availability, American Airlines allows an award trip between the same two cities to be changed at no charge.  For the return trip, we were talking about having an overnight stay at our U.S. gateway airport before completing the trip the next day.  For our existing flight to Charlotte, it would be an inconvenience that there's no hotel attached to the terminal.  I went for it when a connection through Chicago became available:  we can use points at the Hilton attached to the terminal (true, not the international arrivals terminal) and then have a short flight to get home.  Quirks of the AA site include that international award bookings cannot be changed online:  they need a phone call.  Calls to AA have long hold times, but give the option of asking for a call back.  I did this, and got the flight change we wanted.

The bigger problem was the outbound:  I had chosen the date based on being able to get from Kansas City to Milan with one change.  Before I made this change on the return, I'd gotten an email saying that our schedule had been changed:  the Kansas City-Miami flight was no longer on the schedule for that date, and we'd been booked to Dallas-Fort Worth the night before, needing to be on our own to spend the night before going to Miami and getting the flight to Milan. 

We could get a hotel at DFW on points, but I still didn't like being forced into this change.  I had an alternative in mind completing it all in one day, and people on FlyerTalk said that, after a schedule change like this, I should be able to get a change booked regardless of SAAver availability.  I was reluctant to do this right away because of the chance that the KC-Miami flight would be reinstated (it's still set to operate on some days of the week at that time), and that there might be a future schedule change that would make trouble.  I was hoping to wait until the merger was complete and maybe the schedule was firm around two months before travel to try to change, but some people advised that AA may not be so receptive.

I still chose to sit and wait, checking almost daily to see if there was SAAver availability on alternate flights with good connecting times.  About a month and a half after being told of the change, I found availability on the JFK-Milan flight, the transatlantic segment being most important, and KC-Washington, with Washington-NY LaGuardia, requiring being on our own to claim bags and get to JFK, but allowing a long time for that. 

I hoped that I could invoke the problem of the schedule change to force availability on a Washington-JFK flight.  This agent insisted that I could only change to an itinerary with SAAver availability, so the flight to JFK was no go.  I explained the rule as I understood it, regretting that I didn't have a rule number to cite.  I thought of the often cited advice to hang up and call again, but it's a pain to need to call and wait for a call back.  I also thought that, if SAAver availability is in fact important, I should get this while it's available on the transatlantic segment.  I asked for a supervisor, waited on hold for a long time; the supervisor was more difficult to talk to than the first person, and still no budging on the rules.   I finally agreed to the connection requiring getting to LGA and allowing five hours to get to JFK; there's also a comfortable connecting time at Washington National.  I think these flights are pretty safe from having major schedule changes:  the Washington-LGA flight is an hourly shuttle inherited from other airlines.

So, maybe there was a better way of handling it, but we can live with this, and I'll keep checking for availability on the Washington-JFK flight.

Italy-France in 2016 coming into being

I haven't posted in over a year, since the end of our last trip to Europe; the booking of our next international trip becomes the occasion to revive this blog.

Pretty much since the end of that trip, and maybe before that, I had in mind the next trip, as usual with most of the time in Umbertide, but with the main side venture being to Grimaud, in southern France, where I lived for a year at age 13.  I generally view that year negatively, that at that age I was home-schooled and didn't have contact with peers.  I like the thought of going back with Margaret, showing the full success of having reached married life.

I've had in mind to go to Grimaud early in the trip, but I want to have the first leg of the open-jaw flight go to Milan rather than Nice.  I've accumulated a nice bunch of American Airlines miles mostly from credit card opening bonuses and the merger with US Airways, and it reached the stage where booking off-peak award trips for us will take less than half my mileage balance.  I see active people on travel boards talking about high airfares to Europe, when I've been able to go on miles most of the time, and the miles I've earned from flying have not been much of a key part of reaching these awards.

Reasons for flying to Milan are that flying to Nice on an AA award would probably require flying on British Airways, which has surcharges on awards that make it pointless to call it a free flight, and undesirable connections at Heathrow, and that a one-way car rental from France to Italy would have big surcharges.  Flying to Milan on AA's own flight makes it easier; they fly there from New York JFK and Miami.  JFK has its problems of needing a connection from Kansas City, and often the connecting flights on awards were only offered to LaGuardia, and we'd need to change airports on our own.  I was starting to think of starting our trip in St. Louis to use their non-stop to Miami, when last fall AA announced  the start of KC-Miami non-stop service.

I was thinking a lot about how to go about booking:  whether it was really needed,  I was going to see about what showed when the dates first opened for booking.  When that is can be a matter of confusion:  schedules open 331 days in advance, by you're more likely to start seeing SAAver awards at T-329.  Some people book their trips as one-ways; I was hesitant to do that in case an available  return date made it too different from a 3-week trip.  But AA does allow keeping bookings on 5-day holds.  I was aiming for a trip that ended by May 15, allowing us to go at the off-peak rate of 40,000 miles round trip, of which 10% would be rebated as a credit card holder.

So I started searching for an outbound 5 days before the schedule would open to allow returns through May 15.  I found availability to put on hold for the trip to Milan with one change in Miami, for a midweek date a few days before the ideal weekend dates.  With this, the return would be a few days earlier than planned, so I felt justified looking for return availability after a couple of days.  I had understood that I could modify the one-way I had on hold to a round trip or open jaw, but there was a message on my Hold screen that it could not be changed online.  Our preference was to get a return flight out of Rome, but what first showed was a one-change return from Milan.  I put a hold on that, and the options from Rome were frustrating.  Even excluding British Airways flights, and open to Air Berlin options with an overnight in Berlin, the frustrations with AA offerings were:  we were open to spending the night at the U.S. gateway, but what showed were options arriving at JFK or Philadelphia and then going to Charlotte or Miami for another connection or overnight.

I could book one of these and, as obsessive as I am, I would probably keep checking and eventually find a better option out of Rome, which we could change to at no charge as a trip between the same two cities, whereas if we booked out of Milan, we couldn't change it to Rome.  People on Facebook advised me to do the bad booking out of Rome and keep watching, but I was making plans based on going from Milan, having some time in Rome and taking the high-speed train, and perhaps getting a credit card for the purpose of having the points for a stay at the hotel attached to the terminal at Malpensa airport.

But then there was an opening for two out of Rome with one change in Charlotte; I held that and then completed the bookings as one-ways once we reached the outbound hold deadline and there were no better dates.  The option to put awards on hold is an extra consideration in award travel not being available, and then coming up; we need to consider what other people who are trying to book might be doing.  I mentioned to Margaret that there was the option of flying to JFK, spending the night, and then continuing with a connection; she kind of liked that, but it was no longer available.  I can keep searching for that, and the schedules may well continue to change with the completion of the merger; there's some question whether Rome-Charlotte service will continue.

So we have that basis of the trip booked:  the outline of the plan is, on the early-morning arrival in Milan, take the train, spend three nights in Genoa, which I haven't really seen, then rent a car to go to Grimaud for three nights.  Then go to Umbertide for our base until we go to Rome at the end.  There will be more to think about, with the flight dates established.

Italy 2014 trip coming into being

Thanks mainly to the bonus I got for getting the Explorer credit card last summer, I've had the United miles to book one of us to Italy, keeping to the biennial plan and going in 2014. Looking for a time that works and is before prime season, I was looking at a trip in May, being in Venice for our first anniversary. Although I think the thought is exaggerated that people should book awards as soon as the schedule opens around 330 days in advance, I felt ready to look and potentially book a trip when dates including prospective return dates were open for United awards.

The plan was for an open-jaw trip, into Venice and out of Rome. Although I was trying to avoid doing it too often, I did sometimes search award availability for the dates available before my dates came up, and found sometimes there was availability on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Venice; anything else to Venice on a United award would require a connection, usually in Germany. But a return from Rome generally did not show a US flight. Since I was going to need to pay for my own flight, it looked like a paid trip US one way, United/Lufthansa the other, was going to be priced like two one-ways and prohibitively expensive.

But then when I looked at return dates that had just opened up, they sometimes showed only the US flights: they were loaded with award seats before the UA flights were. Plus, I found a list of when different airlines load their schedules: UA loads them 337 days in advance, US 330 days. On the night when I was ready to search with the possibility of completing a booking, after midnight Eastern time, I did a search for my dates of choice. The ideal return date wasn't showing, but with a return a day earlier there was US availability in both directions. I made the decision that this was good enough. And then, when I got up the next morning, there was availability on US flights on the ideal return date. Since it was within 24 hours of the original booking, I could make the change at no charge, even a few days after United changed the rules to have a $75 change fee when changing dates on an award trip on the same route. I'm not expecting very good service from US compared to Lufthansa, but we have the convenience of a transatlantic flight to Venice, with one long layover in the U.S. In the long layover in Philadelphia on the outbound, we can hope to see friends.

To sum up, it was to our advantage for me to book right at schedule opening. There was the advantage of getting the US flight to Venice, the US return flight was showing as a UA award before it showed on the US site, and I suspect it would stop showing as an award once UA awards were showing for that date.

In the shadow of this is the plan for US to leave the Star Alliance and merge into American Airlines. When I book myself on these flights, I don't know if I'll be able to earn UA miles on it, although I think US will still be operating under its own name. There's much to see about whether the flights will still operate under the schedules that are showing now.

So I've gotten plans started with this flight booking, and we'll see in general what will happen during this trip. This will probably be just less than a week in Venice, and two weeks in Umbertide. I'll be looking into Venice lodging shortly, and other details can be thought out closer to the time.

Time passing, new Italy trip

Since I last posted here, Margaret has visited me twice, the second time to see an opera at the new Performing Arts Center in Kansas City, and we arranged to go to Los Angeles together to join a SlowTrav get-together. Things are well affirmed between us.

I went to my parents' for Thanksgiving when they essentially ordered me to go. Booking relatively late around peak dates, I did a non-Southwest trip on regional jets, on Continental to Manchester via Newark, returning on Frontier from Boston via Milwaukee, opting out of Boston's body scanner, and gate-checking a bag on a full flight.

I generally reactivate the blog when planning for an international trip is under way. When I was with my parents, I established that the house in Italy was available for most of next year. I've been wanting to have Margaret join me in Italy, using my United miles. We've been looking to plan it around a reunion of the school in Rome that we attended, but enough time has passed with no announcement that I was ready to make a booking without regard to a reunion.

Margaret was willing, and I asked the SlowTrav board a planning question based on my general thought that the trip should include Capri, and for a trip in May, which was showing decent award availability. For most United awards, there's better availability if you go through Germany on Lufthansa. I was looking at having Capri at one end of the trip, and so using Naples airport. With Margaret going from Sacramento, many options had flights from the West Coast to Germany, but I was looking for places were I could more easily join her for the transatlantic flight, Chicago in particular. If we had Capri at the start of the trip, I was looking at a flight arriving in Naples at 4.15 p.m. Then I got to think that getting to the port and ferry to Capri after that long overnight series of flights could just strain us too much. It could be better to have Capri as the culmination of the trip, but a 6 a.m. flight out of Naples would mean staying on the mainland.

For my first choice of return date, flying out of either Naples or Rome would mean going through Germany. Some people on the boards were urging me to try for a transatlantic flight out of Rome. The United site wasn't allowing open-jaw booking if partner airlines were involved; I could pay to go through a phone agent or, as the merger gets closer, transfer the needed miles to Continental, which allows this open-jaw online booking.

Before I did this, I tried a round trip to Rome on the United site. By changing the return by a day, I was able to book Margaret on the Rome-Newark flight. That calls for a long Newark layover and a connection through Houston; these are all current Continental routes; I don't know if, once the airlines are fully merged, she could make a more logical connection through the United hubs of Chicago or Denver. I'm guessing the Houston-Sacramento flight has award availability because it isn't so much in demand.

Margaret certainly shows excitement at this trip; I'm hoping I can wait a bit to book my paid trip on the same transatlantic flights. Wanting specific flights might limit my search for the best fare, but I've signed up with Yapta to monitor the fare. My mother may also go, so there's much to work out about details of the trip once everyone's booked.

Berlin postscript on getting United miles

I got a United-branded credit card for the main purpose of getting the 50,000-mile bonus, so Margaret or I can aim to have a free trip to Italy. I got it after my United flight to Germany was booked and, given that a $600 voucher was applied to the flight, I was willing to spend a little money to get some extra comfort and have United charges with triple miles on my credit card.

So I got Premier Travel Plus for my Chicago-Frankfurt flight. Its benefits of a fast line for check-in and security weren't relevant to me on this connecting flight, so tossing those out, the benefit optionss were:

Premier Travel: Economy Plus seating with Group 1 boarding, and 25% bonus miles.

Premier Travel Plus: Economy Plus seating with Group 1 boarding, a pass to the Red Carpet Club, and 100% bonus miles.

I had my confirmation of the Premier Travel Plus purchase, and I saw that at the time of the purchase, before the flight, I got a mileage bonus that was 25% of the miles of the trip. I thought that was curious, but maybe the rest would be credited after I took the flight. I had a slight doubt about whether I'd actually been acknowledged with the Plus version, but it was on my boarding pass and I was admitted to the Club on the day of the flight.

I completed the trip, and got the base miles for all flights, but no additional Premier Travel Plus miles. A little over a week after my return, I sent an e-mail to Mileage Plus about the missing miles. There was a warning on the form that it could take a week to get a reply; it was close to that, and the reply included "According to the Terms and Conditions of the Premier Travel Plus, 25% mileage bonus will be accrued by the traveler who purchased this offer," and I received what was due. This when the Web site is very clear: 25% for Premier Travel, 100% for Premier Travel Plus. I replied to that, linking to their FAQ that makes that clear. Another week and no e-mail reply; I needed to phone. I called and got routed around five people, I think, who could have been in many parts of the world. One person talked about Premier status with the program, another said something like "If all Economy Plus seats are taken, you can't get one," neither of which had anything to do with what I was asking. The last agent put me on hold for some time, then acknowledged that I was right and would get the miles credited. The total call took about 50 minutes.

It took all this to get the miles that their site says very plainly should be owed. A major corporation evidently didn't have the system programmed right to give what should be straightforward. I hope their flight navigation programs are done better than this.

Travel planning for memorial

I am looking ahead to being in New England for a memorial show for Flo and to bury his ashes. There are emotions around that, but I'd like to report about the travel planning.

Airfares for the trip on Southwest were getting borderline high; I got two Southwest awards for getting their credit card, and I was thinking of booking an award, which I could cancel if good fare sales turned up. In a matter that I mishandled, I thought I'd wait for the right time to ask my parents about the right dates to travel. I did this when they visited me; then I found that paid fares were getting much higher, and it was very difficult to find any award availability. Although Manchester, N.H., is the closer airport to my parents' home, the only award I could find on the outbound arrived in Boston, and too late to catch the last bus to my parents' area. I booked that, hoping something better could turn up, but there were no awards to find for the return.

So there were the options of making tentative bookings with Southwest, who allows for flexibility, booking an expensive return but hoping for a lower fare or award to turn up, and I could keep the extra funds for future travel. Or I could book a paid trip with another airline, and I'd be committed to whatever I booked (those would entail big change fees). Or, while I kept checking for Southwest Standard Awards, consider my Plan B to convert two awards to a Freedom Award, which I could use on any flight that wasn't completely sold out. I committed to nothing, and kept that as my ultimate back-up, until...

In one forum, someone brought to my attention that American and United now had one-way awards. I don't have much activity with flights on those airlines, but let myself get bonuses and thought they might eventually get to some useful level. It happens that because of a bonus, I'd recently switched my dining miles earning from Delta (which was a merge from Northwest) to United. I was getting very close to the 12,500 miles needed for a one-way award. While Delta had posted dining miles once a month, I figured out that United posted them weekly, on Tuesday. To be sure of reaching the needed miles, I bought a gift card from a local restaurant. A one-way award was showing; I wasn't that confident that it would still be there this week, but I aimed for it in case it was available. Lo and behold, it was, for a flight out of Manchester at a decent time. I also looked at United one-way awards from Burlington, Vt.: they had one with a routing Burlington-Washington Dulles-Detroit-Chicago-Kansas City, all on regional jets, not too appealing if one isn't earning miles and getting status by flying many segments. So I have that United return out of Manchester and, unless something better opens up, a Southwest outbound to Boston at an inconvenient time, but something can be worked out around it.

On Southwest, it used to be that a Standard Award could be used on any flight that had seats available. My experience using the current capacity-controlled awards around the year-end holidays has been that there was good availability; now it's disappointing that awards are unavailable for a big block of time, and Southwest's fares are higher than on other airlines. It would have given me pause to have to use two awards for the type of unrestricted travel that until recently was available with one; it looks like Southwest is very popular with its "Bags Fly Free" and generally good performance.

New year, new developments

I'm back from my year-end holiday trip to my parents' home in Vermont; the Southwest flights went smoothly on the fringes of weather problems. My sibling Flo joined us from Haiti for too short a time, coming from some tragic developments there. News around airline security: well, I don't want to get into my opinions about that here.

Anyway, focusing on my summer trip plans, I transferred some miles to my father's Delta account, so there would be miles for both parents to go to Italy if they could find the trip at a low miles price in one direction and medium in the other. We couldn't find the low miles at the start, but as of Jan. 1 there was low-mile availability to Milan going a little before I get to Paris, and we could use the medium miles to return from Rome at the same time. My father had some hesitation about going for that long, but finally went ahead and booked it. So I'm glad about that, feeling that it's nice that we could work it out while I was with them. Another couple, friends of theirs, may join us, so some details will depend on that.

With the new year, I went ahead and booked my Paris stay. In March I have the Slow Travel gathering in San Diego, with some details to work out there; most of the details about Europe planning can wait until after that.

Waiting it out

A few small things have happened as I wait to get further into planning my Paris-Italy trip. As Delta and Northwest merge their programs, there was for a few days a very generous posting of miles, which was a mistake in my favor, but it got corrected. I also hope the combined airline is learning to correct some high-profile things that happened with them: the plane where the pilots got so involved with their laptops that they overflew MSP, and the plane that landed on the taxiway at ATL.

There have been more minor changes in my itinerary: most notable is that my Paris-Rome flight has been moved still later, which could mean more complications depending what World Cup match is being played. Editing to add a key point: I learned of the renaming and re-assignment of the Rome FCO airport terminals, so my Air France flight will arrive at Terminal 1, the Alitalia and partners terminal, formerly Domestic Terminal A.

Frequent flyer adventures, part 2

Updating on my planned trip to Paris and Italy reported in my post of Sept. 12: I asked SlowTrav about whether to consider an apartment in Paris. There are some good points for families to stay in an apartment: to have more room and have some meals in. Going by myself, I'm used to spending five nights in a small room, and I'll mostly just be sleeping there. I'd certainly rather enjoy the cuisine of Paris than what I might put together; I'd probably just have one big meal a day, and make good use of crêpe stands. So I'm inclined to stay in the hotel that my parents recommended.

I got my first e-mail of a substantial change in my award reservation. Now the Northwest World Perks frequent flyer program has gone away, absorbed by Delta SkyMiles, but the NW airline and Web site are still around for a few months. The flight from Minneapolis (MSP) to Paris has been moved to a couple of hours earlier, and my flight connecting to it was changed a little, giving me 1 hr. 16 to connect to the transatlantic flight, less time than I'd like. That would probably work out, being June and early enough in the day to hope that not too many delays have accumulated, but I'd still be worrying, and I was wanting a long layover to make use of one of the SkyClub passes that I got with my Amex card.

My first thought was that, since this connecting time was still legal, I'd be charged a $100 change fee to change to an earlier flight out of Kansas City. I started looking at Delta's standby policy, in hopes of just getting on an earlier flight by asking that day; it seems that they've replaced standby with Same-Day Confirmed travel, where for $50 you can be confirmed on another flight starting three hours ahead of that flight. The problem with that is that they don't allow it, even on a domestic segment, if part of the itinerary is intercontinental.

I started going through the motions of changing the booking online, to see that I would indeed be charged the change fee. The result was that I would get that charge, but the miles price was given as (15,000), meaning the trip was now priced at 60K miles, and they would put 15K back into my account. I thought about it for a couple of hours, and went ahead and made the change to a first flight that gives me a 3+-hour layover. A mile valued at 1.5 cents is fair in the current market, and getting these miles back gives me some reason to add to the miles in the recently emptied account, for instance by continuing to take advantage of the free year of my Amex card which otherwise has a $95 fee.

After completing the change, I saw a message on the confirmation saying something like "Because of our schedule change, you may be able to change your flights without a fee." I watch for details, but did I miss this before I made my change? I later got some advice that this was a type of change to make by phone, and they might have waived the change fee. I much prefer making bookings online, but I made a phone call to see if I could get the fee waived. The first agent thought there couldn't be retroactive changes, even within 24 hours, but forwarded me to WorldPerks. As I'd often found with NW, that line gave me a message that they were too busy and ended the call rather than put me on hold. I started another call, where another agent advised me to make e-mail contact. I got a reply that started "If the change to the reservations were 1 hour or less there would be a charge to change the flights." I puzzled over that, and I guess that means (had some clarification in a follow-up) that since the time that their schedule change imposed out of Kansas City was less than an hour after what I initially booked, it doesn't allow a free change. I got an explanation of "Schedule change" options on the Web site, getting to be moot as the NW site goes away. Never mind that I got a short connecting time that I wanted to avoid, and the transatlantic flight time, from Midwest mid-afternoon to Paris at 7 a.m., is less favorable for sleeping and for finding a hotel room ready on arrival. It also occurred to me that I should have tried to change my Paris-Rome flight, but I'm of two minds about that.

So I guess that's how it stands. I fear more schedule changes as NW is fully absorbed into Delta, and I hope that doesn't make me pay another change fee or negate what I got for this. I haven't minded this fee too much, since I've gotten the better end of several deals with NW over the years.

Southwest's ill-timed generosity

Updating my transatlantic booking: Northwest has changed all its flight numbers starting in late October. I got an itinerary update e-mail with new flight numbers, but the flight times are the same.

I view this blog as mainly about international travel, but here's an occasion to report on my domestic travel with Southwest Airlines. SWA has much in its favor: from Kansas City, they have the only non-stops to many places, all flights are the same aircraft type (no jungle jets), and they've given me enough drink coupons that I can have alcohol on all flights, even the early-morning ones. With no change fees, I can often rebook at a lower fare and have the difference as a credit for future travel. If I need to change plans, there's a potentially higher fare and I need to pay the difference, but no change fee on top of that. I can work with their open seating system so it's usually preferable to assigned seating on other airlines; they've added a new wrinkle where I need to see if I should spend $10 for EarlyBird check-in and a pre-assigned early place in line.

I endeavor to earn one award ticket per year with them, to use for the year-end holidays. Since they expire a year after being issued, I've been trying to get them issued early in the year so they're available for that use or any emergencies before that. It's a bit much even for me to take eight round trips a year to reach award level with them; in addition to car rentals, a conversion from the Choice Privileges hotel program helps to top off an award. Ideally I would convert what I needed early in the year. However, Choice has a history of devaluing their conversion rate without notice. This summer, word got out that there was a discreet notice on their Web site that they were about to do a new devaluation. I made the conversion at the old rate, noting that I would need to limit what SWA credits I would get for the rest of the year, so an award wasn't issued too early.

A trip to Baltimore (really Washington) in mid-June had not posted. Enough time passed that I figured that it would not post until I made the request online, and they allow two years to do that. I had my booking to the SlowTrav get-together in St. Louis for $30 each way, less than the price of gas, and a car rental with a coupon for next to nothing, also using a code that would get me double Southwest credit. I would be right there at two credits short of an award, and I would put in for the missing Baltimore credits in January and get the award issued.

On the curious date of September 11, nearly three months after the flight, I got an e-mail that an award had posted with those credits. So next 9/11 is the expiration date of that award, which I was aiming to use in December 2010, and I need to decide whether to use it by the expiration date or extend it for $50. I've thought of the one-year expiration and that fee as unfair, but I've learned to consider it reasonable. My previous plan was also holding me back from taking any more trips this fall, but now I'm open to doing that. I'm kicking myself for not doing the St. Louis car rental without the bonus code, so I would still be a half-credit short. It's mysterious why the SWA credit posted at this late date, but I can't say I have a grievance with them. Their program's been devalued since they offered unrestricted award trips to members who took four cheap round trips. They have a genius at keeping the program attractive, or at least one that can be worked with, as they devalue it. They're delaying the start of Rapid Rewards 2.0, which reportedly will give points based on fare paid, and I'm thinking it will be difficult for me to benefit from that.

Frequent flyer adventures

As I've given a lot of attention to practical travel matters, I continue to learn things. I've been able to take overseas award flights most years this decade with very little paid travel. Early in the decade I got several bonuses for changing my long distance phone service when I make little use of the phone; more recently bonuses for getting credit cards have earned me awards. In Northwest's program, I took award trips to Europe in 2007 and 2008, while my only miles-earning trips during that time were a couple of trips to Toronto and one to Savannah for the 2008 Slow Travel gathering. As the merger with Delta came into place, I started getting some small bonuses to revive my near-empty account with them, and the miles could be combined for a new transatlantic award. Here is a report on the trip that didn't happen as this is written in 2009, and the trip that I have booked for 2010.





The trip that didn't happen, Paris-Berlin 2009.





I was continuing to get bonuses on NW, mostly from restaurants on the Rewards Network list. I had dropped NW's Visa card when the annual fee came due in late 2008. NW appeared to consider me still a cardholder when their affiliation with that Visa ended, and they gave me an especially nice offer for the Delta American Express card. I regularly go to Italy in even-numbered years; I thought that if the opportunity came into place I could go elsewhere in Europe this year, and the chance of combining Paris and Berlin looked interesting. I have a history with Paris, having lived there a year as a child, and made frequent visits when I lived in Italy as a teenager. I haven't been to Berlin, and have gotten interested in visiting for several reasons. With the credit card bonus, I could make this trip.





The bonus for getting the credit card came in three sections. There was a warning to expect each to take 8-12 weeks to post, but the first two posted promptly. For the third, I needed to charge a certain amount in the first three months; I reached it by the second billing date in late June and was checking regularly to see if the bonus posted. Although people were saying that the two airlines' low-tier transatlantic award of 60,000 miles was getting nearly impossible to find, I was looking and finding availability for the 3-legged trip (that is, including a Paris-Berlin flight) at that level, leaving from St. Louis where I would be for a Slow Travel get-together on Aug. 30.





Even though NW and Delta are becoming the same airline, and until Aug. 31 miles could be transferred between programs, the two sites were often showing different award availability, and the NW site was easier to search for the 3-legged trip. The search involved some steps for which a lesson may not be that useful since the NW Worldperks program is set to go away in October, but in brief: select Multi-City and WorldPerks award, fill in the three city pairs, and note to change the default dates that they put in. Presumably a list by Lowest Miles for each segment is what would most interest people, but the list doesn't come this way; you need to select a button to have it sort with the Lowest Miles first. If the intra-Europe segment is at 12,500 miles, the whole trip prices at 60K.





On the Delta site, if you select the Multi-City option it doesn't show the price in miles of each segment. The way around this is to to search each segment first as a round trip and see which flights are in the low-miles bucket. A curiosity there is that for intra-Europe trips Delta's "taxes and fees" for an award trip were often more than the fare at which the trip could be booked for money on the Air France site. Both NW and Delta's sites were flaky about showing good availability once, then shortly afterwards not showing that flight available even at the high miles level. In particular NW's site was on and off about showing Air France flights.





I was trying not to search too often before I had the miles, but I kept doing it. Availability out of St. Louis went away, but I found it out of Chicago, where the transatlantic flight would be on Air France, which I'd prefer. As a contingency for this, I booked a (cancellable, funds could be used for later travel) St. Louis-Chicago flight on Southwest for $30, and I'd need to get from Midway to O'Hare airport. Another remaining alternative was to return home and fly out of Kansas City the next day; that itinerary would require changing Washington, D.C., airports. Those options went away and I was looking at leaving a week later, the latest option before there would be bigger problems in being away from work.





Usually the Paris-Berlin availability only showed for connections through Amsterdam; in fact, even though Air France was a partner and these airlines fly from their hubs to Paris, I was looking at all three legs connecting through AMS. Some options showed a long enough layover there after the overnight flight that I'd have considered a few hours at the Yotel in the terminal. Often the only non-stop Paris-Berlin flight with availability was at 7 a.m.; I first thought I'd rather connect through AMS than try that, then I got ready to go with that flight and stay on points at the airport Hilton the night before. People also said that going from central Paris to CDG airport by taxi or car service to make a flight at that time is fast, but it can be a problem to go by public transportation, as I'd prefer, at that hour.





The miles didn't post with my third statement in late July, and I started to get cold feet about making the trip. Although I could afford the costs on the ground, they would still be substantial at a time that I should be thinking more about saving for retirement. Silly as it seems, what really turned me against this trip was hearing a story on public radio that the Berlin S-Bahn train was having problems and service had been cut back. If I go to Germany, I want to see efficient public transportation!





So in early August, I booked a trip to see my family in Vermont the first week of September. On Aug. 7, the miles finally posted and out of curiosity I searched and found that there was still availability for this trip leaving the first weekend of September, but I'd decided not to take it and was otherwise committed. It was hard to believe that I was still accumulating miles to this extent, but surely if I used the miles this year, next year's trip to Italy would need to be paid. Now I had the miles for my 2010 trip to Italy with a stopover in Paris. Berlin will need to wait.





The trip that's booked: Italy with a stopover in Paris, 2010





Before I had the final bonus, I transferred all my NW miles to Delta because that's where the credit card bonus would go. When that bonus took me over 60K, I transferred that amount to NW because of their easier booking. When another bonus for partner transactions with Delta posted before the Aug. 31, I made another transfer to have 75K with NW.





So there were considerations in when to go to Italy. There's a small window of time when the family house isn't rented before the height of summer. I could wait for a trip in September or later, but there was some appeal to booking while the better NW site is up and while Continental is still a partner (that ends in late October): having them with one connection in Newark as an option is nice.





While watching U.S. Open tennis on television in my parents' home, having briefly talked about when the Italy house would be available, I couldn't resist searching on a laptop for current availability for this trip. I found it for early summer dates, going to Paris first, at 75K. Maybe I could have waited to find something at 60K, but it was hard to wait much longer, and, as I prefer, these transatlantic flights are without a change in Europe. In fact I think this availability showed because the Minneapolis-Paris and Rome-Detroit flights had just been put back on the schedule. These were booked as NW flights but it appears that only the Delta name will be in place then, and I'm expecting to see big schedule changes before I go.





For Paris-Rome, I only needed a flight with medium-tier award availability, and maybe the choices were limited because of momentary site flakiness and I should have waited. There were options to connect through Amsterdam, which seems really out of the way, and others to connect through Lyon or Bordeaux; one option was to stay overnight in Lyon and leave late enough the second day to see some of Lyon, probably not a good way for a Slow Traveler to make a one lifetime visit. Having a connection on these flights also adds to the fees on an award ticket. I considered flying to Florence, but I went with the one non-stop to Rome that was showing, in the evening, so if I'm going alone I'll probably stay at a Rome airport Hilton. Then I noted that World Cup quarterfinals will be in progress; if France or Italy are playing it will be interesting trying to get service, and I'll be wanting access to TV too. If I'd waited to book, maybe I could have found a more convenient flight time, but it would have meant devoting the full day to the relocation; as I have it, I can do things in Paris before leaving.





While I was booking, there was also the option for my parents to book their award and join me, just for the Italy part. It would require a transfer of miles, at a cost but for now with a bonus, from mother to father. I was finding availability at 60K from Boston or a closer airport but connecting through Detroit (an indication that the reinstated flight was the key). When I changed it to search availability for two people, it was no longer showing. So their plans are on hold; I have hope that there's time for this to become available at the lower mile level. People worry about Delta showing much availability; my experience is that airlines in general improve their award availability in January for summer travel.





So, thinking about non-airline matters, for Paris my parents recommend a hotel, but I also need to be open to the SlowTrav style of apartment stays. I have a long list of museums I want to see, and I need to see if the Paris Museum Pass makes sense. My stay in Italy will be shaped by whether my parents are there; I'll need to consider whether to spend the whole time in the Umbertide house with a few excursions around Umbria and nearby Tuscany, or take other trips around. Arriving on Friday night, do I rent a car at the airport although I try to avoid the surcharge, or do I take the train to, say, Perugia, to rent the car before the Saturday midday closing? Or spend time in Rome before going to Umbria? Things to consider.