Cayman, Panama, Rio, Cancun: Svetlana’s Southern Adventures with United Miles

Svetlana wanted to visit Grand Cayman for Thanksgiving, Rio de Janeiro for Christmas (with a possible stop in Panama City on the way) and then do a girls’ weekend in Cancun over President’s day weekend 2013. We went to work with United miles!

Laying out the segments and trip legs

United miles are our favorite and very flexible for complicated multi-leg itineraries. We looked up the cheapest option for each leg on United so we knew how many miles we’re looking at. Svetlana has the Chase United MileagePlus® Explorer Card. This card has a unique benefit in that, when redeeming Standard Awards on United, you can choose any seat they have for sale. This is very helpful when making plans over busy travel periods like the Sunday after Thanksgiving!

All costs for legs can be found with the United Airlines interactive award chart.

Note: The Standard Economy reward price from Los Angeles to Rio is 55,000 United Mileage Plus miles, which is the same as what we found pricing through Panama City.

We also could not find any reasonably scheduled award flight on United from Los Angeles to Grand Cayman. No one wants to make two stops when flying to a relaxing beach vacation! We decided Samba for Miles would just buy the ticket to Grand Cayman for $330 miles and fly US Airways.

If you get the rest of the segments individually, it will cost 187,500 miles. Whoa, that’s a crazy amount of miles! With some clever rearrangement, we did it all for 122,500 miles! This saved 65,000 miles, which happened to be the exact amount Svetlana would later need for her 2013 trip to Asia (a little hint of what’s to come in later posts…)

United Airlines Mileage Plus allows a stopover and two open-jaws on an international roundtrip award.

Because these are three different trips, Svetlana has to return to Los Angeles three times. When one leg ends in Los Angeles and another starts in Los Angeles, these can be combined into a single leg where Los Angeles is the stopover point.

The cost of the combined leg becomes the cheapest class that encompasses both legs:

• Saver Business + Saver Business = Saver Business
• Standard Economy + Standard Economy = Standard Economy
• Saver Business + Saver Economy = Standard Business

The trick is to combine similar “expensive” legs into single legs and make the remaining roundtrip leg a “cheap” leg. I consider a leg expensive if it is not Saver Economy and cheap if it is.  Svetlana’s six trip legs have four expensive legs and two cheap legs (1. Panama to Rio and 2. Cancun to Los Angeles). We rearranged six legs into two roundtrip itineraries:

Outbound leg:

On the outbound leg, Svetlana travels from Grand Cayman to Panama City.

    Nov 25: Grand Cayman – Houston – Los Angeles

    Dec 22: Los Angeles – Panama City 

    Leg cost: Standard Economy for 35,000 miles

Return leg:

Somehow, in the course of her travels, she ends up in Cancun and then needs to return to Los Angeles on the return leg…

     Feb 18:  Cancun-San Francisco-Los Angeles

     Leg cost: Saver Economy for 17,500 miles

Total: 52,500 miles

The first leg is similar to what we did with Natalya when she went to Grand Cayman and Cancun with United miles. Samba for Miles is traveling from Grand Cayman to Panama City with a stop in Los Angeles for about a month. On her return, she is going from Cancun to LA.

How is this a roundtrip?

United allows a stopover and two open-jaws on a roundtrip award. She is using all her allowed stopovers and open-jaws! You use an open-jaw when you either (a) return to a different city than where you started the trip or (b) leave from a different destination than where one arrives.

Samba for Miles is doing both. She is starting in Grand Cayman and returning to LA as one open jaw. She is traveling to Panama City and returning from Cancun as the second open jaw. Her one stopover is in Los Angeles on her outbound leg. That’s still just one roundtrip, but a very clever one!

Itinerary 2:

This roundtrip uses one stopover and just one open-jaw. The stopover is, again, in Los Angeles. She is leaving from Panama and returning to Cancun and that’s the open jaw.

Total trip cost: 122,500 United Airlines miles + $200 in departure taxes + $330 for ticket to Grand Cayman from Los Angeles.

Putting together two itineraries for three awesome trips

Now we rearrange Svetlana’s two three leg itineraries into the real trips she wants to take.

Grand Cayman:

Nov 22, 2012: Los Angeles to Grand Cayman on US Airways (paid $330)

Nov 25, 2012: Grand Cayman to Los Angeles on United (Itinerary 1, Leg 1)

Rio de Janeiro:

Dec 22, 2012: Los Angeles to Panama on Copa  (Itinerary 1, Leg 1)

Dec 23, 2012: Panama City to Rio on Copa  (Itinerary 2, Leg 1)

Dec 31, 2012: Rio to Los Angeles on United in BusinessFirst with flat-bed seats (Itinerary 2, Leg 2)

Cancun:

Feb 15, 2013: Los Angeles to Cancun on Taca in Business Class (Itinerary 2, Leg 2)

Feb 18, 2013: Cancun to Los Angeles on United in Economy (Itinerary 1, Leg 2)

Summary