--Andrew McGarrell
I went to Asia in November 2002 on an award trip in Northwest's World Business Class. By Fall 2003, without getting miles from any intercontinental trips, I had reached the miles for another intercontinental Business Class trip on Northwest. I knew to try to book this award travel as early as possible.
November 2003: I talked over with my family when the house in Italy would be available and when any of them could go. There was flexibility, and I wanted to take advantage of NW showing on its Web site when award travel was available. Even better, its Japanese site (in English) let one search for award travel a week at a time. I was finding nothing closer than London. NW now offers award travel on Delta, but doesn't show that availability online. I called NW to find out about award availability on Delta; the agent wasn't willing to search the range of flexible dates I had for Rome or Milan, and it generally didn't look good. I went ahead and booked my award to London online; it looked like I got the last NW award trip to Europe in a time frame that worked for me.
December 2003: I'd been building up Hilton Hhonors points with the thought of using them for a free stay at the Rome Airport Hilton before my return flight. Now I thought I'd be flying from Rome to London not too early, and would use the points for a stopover in London. I found out that Hhonors was just starting to have online award booking (described more in the next entry) and got an award stay at the London Kensington Hilton.
Message posted to TheTravelzine Jan. 8, 2004:
I've had some slight complications in my planning of my summer trip to
Europe; I think I have things under control, so I'm reporting this in case
it's interesting or useful to anyone. I reported earlier that I booked a
frequent flyer award on Northwest to London, because I couldn't get any
closer to Italy. Since I did this, NW announced it was resuming service to
Rome, but there was no award availability to be found at the time of the
announcement. More recently, I've found some available award seats to
Rome, but no return seats from there or anywhere in Europe on dates that
work. I could go to Rome and keep the return I've booked from
London. Surprisingly, the only awards to Rome are on weekends, and my
return from London is midweek; going on one of the weekend dates would make
my trip either too long or too short. For now, I'm staying with what I've
booked to London.
From London, there are very low airfares to the Continent on the new
low-cost carriers; since I'm arriving at Gatwick Airport, I was thinking
that I wouldn't bother with the long transfer to Stansted where most of the
low-cost flights depart. I would just stay at Gatwick and take one of the
"legacy" carriers (British Airways or Alitalia), since their
intra-European
fares are more reasonable than they used to be. Also, each of them had an
afternoon flight from Gatwick to Rome that would work well. Although I
felt that it was too early to book these flights, I looked at the
timetables and fares after New Year's and found that both airlines' flights
from Gatwick to Rome were off the schedule; as of summer, the only direct
flight on this route is too early for me. I continue to think that it
would be too grueling to change airports after a transatlantic flight and
not arrive in Italy until night, so I'm looking at the remaining options
from Gatwick: go to Pisa or Florence (pretty convenient for my Umbria
destination) or take easyJet from Gatwick to Milan Linate for next to
nothing. Other family members, my mother at least, may be booking
themselves to Milan so this may encourage me to take this route, and wonder
what schedule changes might still come along.
I'm planning a stopover of a couple of days in London for my return. I've
built up Hilton Hhonors points mostly from credit card use; I'm not a
Hilton-class traveler, but this is a nice way to build up travel points on
a no-fee credit card, and now is an occasion to start using the points. I
get lots of tips on building up points from the discussions on
Flyertalk.com ; I was tipped off that award stays can be booked at
<http://beta.hilton.com>, although it
hasn't been generally announced. I
booked a stay at the London Kensington Hilton. Then the other day there
was word that the Waldorf on Aldwych, reportedly a grand and centrally
located hotel, was becoming a Hilton and, because it was undergoing
renovation, would start out as a Category 1 hotel requiring 10,000 points a
night, as opposed to the 25K for the Kensington on the fringes of things
and 35-40K for most London Hiltons. I promptly tried to book myself at the
Waldorf but award stays weren't available for my days. Then Flyertalk
discussion reported that phone agents were saying it was a mistake that the
Waldorf was listed as a 1; it should be a 6 and anyone who booked it as a 1
would need to have a certificate for 40K points per night. At this
writing, more than 24 hours after the first reports of the misrating, it
still shows on the Hilton Web site as a 1. I was ready to suggest that
Ziners who have Hhonors points and are planning a London trip should try to
snag an award stay at the Waldorf, but now that seems risky.
(Note added later: the Waldorf was promptly made a 6).
Here's an account of what I did right after making the last post:
It's happened before that I've gone public with a travel problem and
then find it already resolved. After going into detail about the
possible problems with my London stopover, I went to Northwest's site
again and found award availability to Rome in both directions on
dates that work for me. In theory it's possible to change these
reservations online, but I got error messages so I made a phone call
around midnight to make sure I could get these flights, and I did.
Even though there's a change fee, I'll be getting a credit because
the taxes to Rome are so much lower. I won't have a London
stopover. After studying so much of how I would handle that
stopover, I owe that fine city a visit in the future.
Conclusion: It's generally good to book award travel as soon as possible, especially when an airline is generous with bonuses but reducing award availability. I've also heard that it's good to try find award seats as soon as an airline announces a new route. With this experience, I've learned that sometimes it pays to wait; I also hear that award seats are often released 90 days in advance. One curiosity: when I've booked award travel, I often check what that ticket would cost to buy. When I booked the London trip, the Business Class fare was showing around $7000. Now, the Rome trip in Business would cost $2000, not much more than the lowest Coach fare for those dates of $1600!
Later in January: I helped my mother watch for when good airfares might turn up from Boston to Rome. One day, on Orbitz, I happened across a round trip of around $580 for my dates, considerably lower than what had shown before. I told her about it; she found the fare no longer available for my departure date, but found it going a few days earlier and booked it. This is on Swiss airlines, and she neglected to think about making an open-jaw reservation so she could visit her friend near Geneva whom she always visits on her European trips. She'll do this in the middle of the Italian trip.
My mother would stay in Rome for the few days before my arrival, and she booked a convent stay at the Istituto S. Giuliana Falconieri. For the end of the stay, her return flight will be at 7 a.m. the same day as mine. This would be the time to use my award stay at the airport Hilton, but no awards are available. So I've booked an award stay at the Cavalieri Hilton, someplace I've never gone near in my years of visiting and living in Rome but will be interested in trying.
Early March: I continue to check every day if an award stay is available at the airport Hilton, but nothing is showing. I'm thinking about booking a rental car, probably through Auto Europe, and worry about the bit of driving I'll need to do in Rome. Since they require prepayment, I'll probably book it at the end of March while they're having a sale; they also promise an upgrade if it's booked for a Europcar location.
March 8: I have announced my home page on TheTravelzine. I've been thinking that while my mother goes to Switzerland, I'll probably take a return trip to Rome, but I also think about taking a low-cost flight somewhere. I figured out that VolareWeb goes from Rome to Bilbao; I'd thought about including Bilbao in a future trip to Portugal, but it may be easier to do it this way. Skyscanner doesn't mention Volareweb's service, but I determined that they fly the route because it's listed (on the Skyscanner site) under both airports and I know that it's an Italian airline, not one with a hub in a remote third country.
March 15: Once I was close enough to my departure to choose my seats on NW, I went online to select a seat from the middle block of two on the A330 in World Business Class. These seats have great leg room when they're positioned as seats, but when reclined one person's head is over the legs of the person behind him. With this setup, I'm on the aisle, I don't need to step over anyone and no one needs to step over me.
March 23: I have booked a rental through Auto Europe with an upgrade. The ambiguous thing was whether the lowest price, a 2-door economy, would upgrade to a compact or just a 4-door economy. I tried it, and the answer was that the only guaranteed upgrade would be to a 4-door economy. I went ahead and booked the 4-door to get a compact.
April 12: It took over three months for NW to reissue my ticket so I could get back my $12 and change for the lower taxes in comparison with the London trip.
June 10: It's been a while since I've updated this page, and I'm about to leave on this trip. My schedule while I'm there is basically open; I just have my worries about driving out of Rome. What can I say, great anticipation. 'Til later.