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Researching the Treasures of Aegean Tour. Need your input on flight arrangements
Hi, beginning research for a 2016 Treasures of the Aegean tour and looking for some suggestions on best airlines and connection airports I should consider. Will be flying from East Coast-USA. From what I have found so far Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines are the two major flight providers into Athens and Istanbul Have never flown on either airlines. Also trying to research best connection airport to consider. Any info you can provide would be appreciated.
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Thanks,
Jeff
The other card choice is SPG's Amex card, which I use extensively. It gives you great access to hotels worldwide - we're spending 5 days in a Westin in Madrid for 48k points - or the ability to transfer points to several airlines like Delta.
Once the card decision is made, call the airlines you want to fly and ask when they post their schedules for your cities. Most only do one year out. On the posting dates start searching for both paid and award flights. Sometimes it is cheaper to use $ than miles - the Madrid trip cost $2200 for a business class ticket from Boston or 50k miles r/t each.
When to get a ticket is becoming a war of computers used by the airlines and the flight bloggers. My opinion is that if using miles, the earlier the better since the airlines are shrinking the number of award seats. Some airline customer service agents are helpful (keep calling until you find one) and can tell you the award inventory is and what their experience is as to when award seats open up for different airlines. For instance, we put an AA business class seat on hold for our last Tauck trip, and was able to get a BA first class seat for the same mileage a few weeks later.
It's complicated - which is why I rely on the youngsters who blog about this for a living
Cheers,
Jan
After my wife died, I still had hundreds of thousands of miles and used them for most of my trips. I now have a non-specific credit card that awards generic miles and use it for EVERYTHING I buy. I pay it monthly and build up miles quickly to just about any airline. I think I had to pay for a portion of my next flight to Buenos Aires. I am going to live in London in June and July of next year and when I crunched the numbers it was cheaper to pay for a portion of the BA flight and use miles for 100% of the London flight.
As far as airlines to the Aegean trip, we flew to Istanbul using Star Alliance partners. If I remember correctly, we flew from Chicago directly to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. They do a nice job. Once that cruise was over we bought tickets from Athens to Catania, Sicily because they were so cheap. We had rented a villa in Sicily for a couple of weeks added an adventure of our own to the Tauck cruise. From Catania we flew to Rome (paid) and then used miles from Rome to the US. I don't remember which city we flew into, but it was on United. I'm guessing New York. All the international flights from or to the US were first class and very comfortable.
United flights didn't have as many bells and whistles as the Turkish and Lufthansa flights I/we used. Getting flights can be a challenge if you deal directly with the airlines, but the credit cards seem to have access to more seats at reasonable rates. They also tend to let you pay money for part of the flight, if you wish or if you don't have enough miles.
Hope this helps.
Sorry Jan, I don't know of any good blogs for Australia, but the principal is the same. Here is one I follow The Points Guy – http://thepointsguy.com/
Cheers,
Jan
Delta and others have made significant changes to their frequent flyer programs that will take effect in Jan 2015. In Delta's case, earning miles will be weighted on how much you spend on a flight as opposed to how far you fly. In that regard, if you book a flight with Tauck at (their unpublished) discount, you may not receive the miles you would have normally earned flying at the carrier's published rate. I found that out the hard way- of course, I have no clue if the miles earned would have offset the savings. That is hard to compute.
I don't fly much, just two long Tauck and may one short trip each year, so even though the blogger info might save me a little money, I just find it is all a bit too much!
A note about schedules- many (most?) airlines start taking reservations no earlier than 330 days before the departure date. Their website may show you a calendar but won't let you select a date outside 330 days.
Ron
tp book the air through Tauck? Are we losing out ($$$) by booking as one way flights (to Athens,
return from Istanbul).
jonathan
Jan, here is an Australian example: http://www.nab.com.au/personal/campaigns/credit-card-affiliate-qantas-rewards-premium?cid=108443460:0