Family Trip to Europe with Miles Tutorial: Finding American Airlines Award Space to Rome

My parents and sister are planning a two week trip to Europe this summer. The vacation will be for three people and cover three different cities in Europe. As an added bonus, they decided to include a trip to Saint Martin in the Caribbean taking advantage of a “better than free” one way trick to save on American Airlines miles. Just about everything (flights, hotels, fuel surcharges) will be paid for with points. This post is part of a tutorial series to follow along step-by-step how I planned their trip!

Series Index:

• Overview

• Finding American Airlines Award Space to Europe

As I said in my overview, we like to plan one step at a time rather than everything at once. When we start planning a trip across multiple cities, here is what we’ll need to do:

• Find award flight to Europe.
• Find award flights from Europe.
• Find flights and train tickets within Europe.
• Book hotels in each city.

In this post, we’ll handle the first task, which is to find award flights to Europe. This has a few challenges that we’ll tackle step-by-step:

• Comes up with a strategy for which miles to use.
• Find award space across the Atlantic.
• Find a way to get the entire traveling party onto one itinerary (not always easy with a family).
• Find a connecting flight to your final destination.

Deciding Which Miles To Use

For the flights to Europe, my preference was American Airlines miles. The reason for this was to take advantage of one of my favorite miles tricks: Combining a one-way trip within North America with a one-way summer trip to Europe and paying just 20,000 miles for both! It doesn’t even have to be the Caribbean (although that’s my favorite destination) and is, in fact, flexible for many North American one-ways.

Additional Reading:

From Caribbean in Winter + to Europe in Summer for 20,000 American Airlines miles TOTAL

How to Add Free One-Way Trips on American Airlines Awards

I suggest you read my above posts for how to pull these off as I want to focus on finding award space to Europe in this post and will return to it later. But to pull of this trick, they needed to find an award flight to Europe that does not touch New York after leaving North America. I will explain later in the series how this comes into play.

Finding Tickets Across The Atlantic

With American Airlines miles, SAAver award space will cost 30,000 miles each way in Economy (20,000 miles during the off-peak period) or 50,000 miles each way in Business Class. When booking an award flight to Europe, the hardest problem to solve will be finding award space across the Atlantic. Flights within Europe tend to be far less expensive and, perhaps for that reason, have far better space. That’s why I like to break up my search into two steps:

• Find space across the Atlantic.
• Find a connecting flight to the final destination.

The American Airlines website will show oneworld award space on American Airlines, air berlin, Finnair and US Airways. To search for Iberia award space, you can visit the British Airways website as American Airlines does not show this.

The easiest award space to find to Europe will generally be on British Airways, but British Airways does charge fuel surcharges. The other partners do not.

As I said, to take advantage of the American Airlines trick where they can add a free one-way within North America, I needed to find a non-stop flight to Europe from New York. For this, I started with the AA Award Map, which quickly lets you search for award space across all of Europe and is extremely helpful. No checking each city individually.

I give full instructions on how to use the AA award map in my post:

The AA Award Map: Search Award Availability to Every City in Europe

But the advantage of this map is efficiency. If I type in my dates, filter to non-stop flights and it immediately displays all the city with non-stop availability from New York at SAAver level.

Booking An Itinerary For Three People

When looking for award space, the one challenge I faced was trying to fly all three people on the same itinerary. The trouble is that it’s not hard to find one ticket on a flight. But two becomes more difficult. And three becomes much more difficult. As I searched, I was able to find one or two tickets non-stop to Zurich or London, but three was just not doable at any convenient time. So here are a few suggestions for how I tackled this issue:

Split up the party, but try to keep a “similar” itinerary

I managed to find two non-stop tickets on American Airlines from New York to London and put my mom and sister on those. These did not incur any fuel surcharges. For my dad, I booked a similarly timed British Airways flight. This way, they could go to the airport together and arrive at similar times and even take connecting flights together to their final destination.

Try to avoid fuel surcharges, but be open to paying them on one or two tickets

The British Airways flight had an additional fuel surcharge of about $200, which we of course try to avoid. But when we fly with a family, we have to make choices between cost and convenience. While paying a fuel surcharge on all three tickets would be annoying, paying an additional $200 total fuel surcharge for an itinerary with three people does not seem so bad.

My parents also have the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, whose miles can be used to cover fuel surcharges or any travel expense. You simply put the charge on your card and then redeem the miles for the expense. The card came with a $440 sign-up bonus and my parents each have one. They’ll be using those miles to pay the taxes and fuel surcharges on their trip.

Summary so far:

Found: Three tickets across the Atlantic, two on American Airlines miles, one on British Airways.

Finding a Connecting Flight To The Final Destination

Once I was set on the flights across the Atlantic, I pulled out the AA Award Map again and checked where they could connect from London. Of course, I could have searched to the final destination at once, but I really wanted to secure that non-stop segment across the Atlantic. I also find it more convenient to search one non-stop segment at a time. Of course, this can all be booked as a single one-way ticket with American Airlines miles provided your connection does not exceed 24 hours.

Because my parents did not want to go through two connections to Europe, I filtered to non-stop flights only from London on the AA Award Map. Many cities came up and we checked through the flight options. It was between starting in Rome and starting in Vienna. London to Rome had three non-stop tickets, was the most convenient time-wise and definitely on their list of places to see!

So what do you think happened next? Did they book the NYC-Rome ticket with a connection in Rome? Of course not! This ticket in June would cost 30,000 miles one-way per person. However, by first taking another trip in the spring and starting the American Airlines miles ticket in the Caribbean, the whole thing will cost 20,000 miles. So in my next post, I will discuss adding a trip to the Caribbean… yes, with us, one trip frequently turns into two!

Summary

So let’s discuss where we are in the plan so far:

• Find award flight to Europe: Three American Airlines award tickets New York to Rome connecting in London.
• Find award flights from Europe.
• Find flights and train tickets within Europe.
• Book hotels in each city.

But because we want to take advantage of the opportunity to book a flight From Caribbean in Winter + to Europe in Summer for 20,000 American Airlines miles TOTAL, we now have a few more tasks:

• Find an award flight from the Caribbean.
• Find a flight to the Caribbean.
• Book a hotel in the Caribbean.