Travel Q & A

Also see:

How We Booked Our Airline Mileage
Award Flights to Europe

To read news items regarding mileage awards and other airline changes, see articles dated Aug 6, Jul 13, and Feb 10, 2008 on our Travel in the News page.

Saved those miles

First, we amassed over 180,000 award miles by using our Alaska Airlines VISA card for nearly every purchase over a few years. You need many, many miles to get a family of 5 anywhere! We use our mileage VISA for groceries, gas, automatic payments for our cell phone and the kids' saxophone rental fees, doctor and dentist co-pays, and if we need to buy any bigger ticket item like a $100 birthday gift, or a home repair, we always check to see if we can use our VISA. We are careful not to overspend, and we pay off the credit card every month.

Alaska Airlines has partner airlines, meaning we can use Alaska Airlines miles to fly with airlines such as Continental or British Airways. However, airlines only allow a few seats per flight to be reserved with miles. The trick to claiming those seats is to get there first. And that starts with a phone call. We ended up making five such phone calls.

Planned way ahead

For our trip to Germany, planned for June of 2008, I first called the Alaska Airlines Partner Desk in July of 2007. Yes, nearly an entire year in advance! The very helpful person at the Partner Desk told me the exact number of days prior to a flight that the seats are ready to be reserved is 330. (Apparently that number can vary by airline.) So that I didn't have to calculate that advance date myself, she even told me the very date that I should call again to reserve a flight for the first day of our planned trip.

Even more confusing, we must reserve the flights TO Europe on that day 330 days in advance, as a one-way ticket, then wait the number of days we planned to be visiting Europe, and call the Partner Desk again, to reserve the flights FROM Europe on that day 330 days in advance. Comprendes? Technically, this would be considered a flight change, which would normally incur a fee, but Alaska Airlines allows this type of change once without a fee. At least they did in 2007.

Called on schedule

So, on the day 330 days before our planned departure of June 23rd, I called the Partner Desk again. The Alaska Airlines representative spent a lot of time with me on the phone. She had to determine which of their partner airlines flew to any city in Germany. There were two: Delta and British Airways. She then found the flights that had 5 seats available for purchase with airline miles. It was decision time for us.

We wanted to visit Munich. British Airways flew there, with a plane change in London, and would cost us 65,000 miles per person. Delta could get us to Frankfurt, with a plane change in Dallas, and would cost us 50,000 miles per person. We decided to fly with British Airways and avoid having to transport our group from Frankfurt to Munich, and also to take advantage of the British Airways in-flight cartoons and movies - crucial when flying 11 hours in one day with kids.

Maneuvered through the rules

Ready to reserve, I called the Partner Desk again. It was another helpful Alaska Airlines representative who educated me about the rules and regulations of airline miles. You see, each person in my family of 5 has a mileage account. One of those accounts receives all the miles associated with our VISA use, plus actual travel miles for one person. The other four accounts receive miles strictly from actual Alaska Airline travel. I had added all the miles balances together and figured we had enough miles for 5 tickets. But there was a catch. We still didn't have enough miles.

Well, actually we did, if we were allowed to pool all of our individual Alaska Airlines miles accounts, as I had assumed. Unfortunately, the Alaska Airlines representative explained that a parent can place miles into a child's account, through a gift of miles from a parent mileage account, or through a purchase of miles, but a parent cannot transfer miles out of a child's account. Plus, I was informed, there is a minimum and a maximum amount of miles that you can transfer per transaction, plus there is a fee for doing so, plus there is a minimum and a maximum amount of miles you can purchase per transaction, plus there is a fee and taxes for doing so. Comprendes?

Weighed the savings

Thus ensued a lot of calculations on paper, and a lot of airline website reference checks. We meticulously calculated various scenarios for the total of the transfer fees and the purchase fees, and compared the results with the price of the airline ticket. Our conclusion: via the Alaska Airlines website, we would transfer the spare parent miles into one son's mileage account, then buy extra miles for that same son's mileage account, bringing his mileage total up to 65,000. It was still cheaper than buying a ticket.

We made these calculations and decisions somewhat frantically, as we had no idea how many other people were hoping to book the same seats we wanted. It was like a race!

Finally decided

Ready to reserve, I called the Partner Desk again. Now, we booked 3 outgoing seats using our main mileage account, the one tied to our VISA, and we booked a 4th seat using the son's mileage account mentioned above. We would still need to buy, at full price, and via the regular airline website, another ticket for my husband, as we were out of useable miles. It was frustrating, since I had miles remaining in my mileage account, and our other two sons each had miles remaining in their mileage accounts, yet since we could not transfer miles between our own sons, those miles could not be combined for another ticket.

Two weeks later, on the day 330 days in advance of the day we wished to return home, I called the Partner Desk again and booked our returning seats.

Came to grips with the final cost

Another surprise - when using miles to reserve a seat, you still need to pay the taxes and any airport fees, which in our case were nearly $100 per ticket. So, for our 4 tickets, including the costs to move all the miles around via transfers and purchases, we paid $1515.40. That amount was just under the regular price for a single ticket from Seattle to Munich at that time, which was $1678.26, and which we did have to pay for my husband's travel. If we paid the regular ticket price for all of us, it would have been $1678.26 times 5, a total of $8391.30! For all 5 of us, we paid just $3193.66, and that amount could have been reduced had we traveled in the spring rather than the summer, or traveled to Frankfurt rather than Munich, or waited another year to go on this trip, and saved more mileage - enough to get us each a mileage seat. Comprendes?

Keep in mind, that if you live on the east coast of the U.S., a trip to Europe is much less expensive. From our home in Seattle, it is a 9 hour flight just to London, then another flight to our destination of Munich. That is a lot of flying, and a high price in summer time. I am so glad for all those accumulated miles, even with the trouble it took to use them. I am also glad we happened to have chosen Alaska Airlines for our mileage VISA so long ago, as I've since learned that other mileage programs may have even more mileage seat restrictions such as blackout times, and fewer mileage award seats available.

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