Family Trip to Europe with Miles Tutorial: Using United Miles from Vienna to New York

Series Index:

• Overview

• Finding American Airlines Award Space to Europe

• Adding a “Cheaper Than Free” One-Way from the Caribbean

• The True Cost of a “Cheaper Than Free” One-Way from the Caribbean

• Using United Miles from Vienna to New York

Because award space to Rome was available on American Airlines, my family decided to start their trip to Europe in Rome. However, as they will be there for two weeks, they plan to visit a few cities so they’ll be returning from another city. After doing some research, they decided they really wanted to visit Prague at some point and take a side trip to Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. As a result, they were open to departing from a few cities based on convenience:

• Prague
• Vienna
• Munich

Even though they booked their flights to Europe with American Airlines miles, they are free to use any miles program to get back. In fact, mixing miles programs can often make it far easier to find availability. I often mix miles programs myself and know I don’t need to restrict myself to always booking a round-trip.

In fact, we could not find any decent availability flying back with American Airlines miles. United Airlines award miles allow one-way trips and turned out to be the miles program my family went with.

Searching for Award Space with United Airlines

Fortunately, United Airlines displays space quite well on its European partners. As United Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance, the miles can be used to book flights on partner flights. A ticket between North America to Europe in economy class will cost 30,000 miles each way.

Once you visit the United Airlines website, simply type in your dates and the number of travelers. For our initial search, we tried Vienna to New York. The Saver level award seats always come up in blue and those are the ones we want to look for.

Since Austrian Airways has a non-stop flight from Vienna to New York, that flight was the one they preferred. While they did not have space for three people to return on a Sunday, my parents opted for the Saturday flight. As they’ll be spending two weeks in Europe, coming home a day earlier and having an extra day to rest is not unwelcome.

We found three tickets non-stop for 30,000 United Airlines miles + $100 each.

The Europe Itinerary: Cities to Visit

After they chose their flight from Vienna to New York, my parents had their European itinerary pretty much decided.

They will be arriving in Rome, where they will spend five nights and then fly to Prague. They will then spend four nights in Prague and two nights in Karlovy Vary. From Karlovy Vary, they are going to take a train to Vienna for another three nights.

We have yet to book the intra-Europe flights, hotels and train tickets and that’s going to be the next big piece of the plan!

Summary

With tickets from Vienna to New York taken care of, let’s take a look at what we’ve done and have left to do:

• Find flights to Saint Martin: Two tickets for 20,000 FlexPerks points each, one ticket for 27,200 Citi ThankYou points (booked!)
• Book a hotel in Saint Martin.
• Find award flight from Saint Martin: Three American Airlines non-stop award tickets included with the trip to Europe (put on hold for 5 days)
• Find award flight to Europe: Three American Airlines award tickets New York to Rome connecting in London (put on hold for 5 days)
• Find award flights from Europe: The United Airlines miles award tickets Vienna to New York non-stop. 
• Find flights and train tickets within Europe.
• Book hotels in each city.