using United frequent flyer miles

We have never had a problem waiting until we can make both departure and return at the same time but, of course, you never know. I would get the 3 award tickets as soon as you can and worry about the others later. We have done that several times and everything worked fine. Sounds like a great trip. Have fun.

My husband and I are traveling to Europe next September, using United miles. We are returning in October. We were flexible for our departure date, but not our return date. I booked the day the return flight was available. I had to book a flight several days earlier than I was originally planning to get a flight from Sacramento - London. I was only finding flights using the least amount of miles on 9/11. We are flying Frankfurt -San Francisco for our return. There were no flights to Sacramento. That was the first day I was able to book and using the least amount of miles. With 6 travelers and enough miles for 3, you might end up having the other 3 fly on different flights. Expect that booking so far ahead your itinerary will change somewhere along the line. Our flight to London has already been changed.

How long will your trip be?

Chris, if you haven't already, call the phone number for frequent flyer assistance and try to get to a human. I found that they can do things that you can't see yourself trying to book through the website.

Chris, you can use your miles to book one-way flights on United (and other airlines as well). So book the departing flights now, and book the return flights as soon as they become available. There is no difference in cost or number of miles. We have done this many times.

We too are going on miles this summer (booked the day they came out) - we had to be flexible, change the itinerary around, my kids and I are going to fly home to my mom's state and stay awhile since we couldn't get miles tickets all the way to our home...

I would book the three you can now, and expect the other three might travel on a different flight, and perhaps to a different location and then meet up with you.

I always book separate one ways while traveling on miles.

Chris, all of our flights to and from Europe from California have been on United Mileage Plus points. Here's what we do. 1) Be sure to get your flight dates organized a year out. 2) 333-337 days out from the day of travel, I call a person at United and schedule my flights. United shows their future flights 333-337 days out. Plus, you have an extra reason for speaking with somebody at United as you need to book 5 and you have enough miles for 3. You should be able to coordinate this with a live agent and you should be able to get seats reasonably close together.

I just checked and I can see flights up until March 26, 2015. That's just short of 11 months out. Mileage Plus permits you to do this online but we usually fly into one airport and out of another. We've never had to pay extra to speak with a United agent but what's $25 to get it right if you get charged.

3) Yes you can request flying into London Heathrow and flying out of Rome Fiumicino. But, as you are in New York, don't be surprised if United flies you from JFK to Washington Dulles before putting you on a plane to London. Yes, there are non-stops from JFK to Heathrow but I'm betting you won't get that flight on points. Same with coming home. Expect to fly from Rome-FCO to Washington Dulles before returning to JFK. For us, we can fly out of SFO non-stop on United partner Lufthansa to Frankfurt but United won't let us do it from Sacramento on points. They first fly us to either Chicago, Washington Dulles or Toronto where we connect to our flight to Europe.

4) Don't be surprised if the Saver Economy rate is not available on the days you want to fly. You might have to adjust. Calling so far in advance, we've always had the best chance of getting what we want. On one trip, United could book us into Florence via Frankfurt on Lufthansa but they apologized that they couldn't get us out of Italy on the day we wanted to come home. I asked what our choices were. The agent said "we can get you out of Zurich". I immediately said book it and we adjusted our trip and had one of our best trips by including Switzerland.

5) After you are successful in booking your trip and obtaining your printed reservations, check up on them every 3 months or so. We never end up with the same flight times we began with. United will make adjustments occasionally over the months and for us, they never let us know by email or letter. We see these adjustments when we check up on the flights. Sometimes, with partner airlines, the flights can even change. All has worked out well on all of our travels. Just check up regularly.

6) Be patient and plan well.

We had really good luck on our previous two trips to Europe using miles. But for our trip in September it's been a challenge, especially since we wanted to fly business using saver miles. After changing the economy flights 4 times, I finally snagged a pair of business seats.
But here are some tips I have based on experience

1) Do you have silver status with United? If so you can change your dates/route on award tickets as many times as you want free as long as the origin and arrival cities remain unchanged. If this is the case you could book your three outbound tickets now, then in two weeks look for your return options. If you need to tweak your dates, you can search both one ways based on availability at both ends. Then I'd call United and explain what you want to change on the out bounds and book for the returns. I've found the awards customer service people are very helpful.

2) I believe United hubs out of Newark, so you may have more possibilities searching out of that airport than JFK

3) For the 3 fares you are purchasing, you have to book round trip as one ways to Europe are more expensive than RT. If I recall when we booked our flights as soon as flights opened up, they were more expensive than waiting a few months. Maybe search flights 2,4,6 and 8 months out to see how the prices change as you get closer to your travel dates. Flights won't sell out until you are really close to travel dates,

4) If you want to book all the flights together, definitely call instead of booking on line.

5) Once you have all six tickets booked, call United and ask them to connect all the reservations. That way if there is an itinerary change, or rerouting, you will all me moved together.

6) Search for the US to Europe flight first- JFK - LHR or EWR to LHR or IAD to LHR or FRA to EWR or FRA to IAD, etc. Figure out which routes, flights, might have direct flight availability. So if you see FRA to EWR availability, then try (FCO) to EWR and see if anything comes up. I've been able to put a saver miles flight together by doing multi-stop saver flights that didn't pull up on the one way search. I tried SFO to LHR and nothing, but then I tried SFO to FRA and FRA to LHR and bingo found saver availability (connection in Charlotte).

7) check your flights regularly for changes. If departure time or arrive times change drastically, or if your connection time changes (especially if connection is really tight), call United to complain, but have your ducks in a row with the flight options you want (another reason to connect all reservations). For our flight back from London in September, we had a flight from LHR to IAD to SFO leaving London at 4pm. Welll United cancelled the flight from DC and put us on a noon flight out of London. Called United and explained that we were taking a train from Edinburgh(we weren't) and the noon flight wouldn't work. I suggested the direct flight from LHR to SFO at 2PM, and without question, they booked us on the direct flight, even though there were no saver flights available.

Hope this helps

Thanks to everyone for the great tips. Looks like at this point, looking at the United website for award travel, there is still a lot of availability for saver awards. So far the best I've found is direct to London from Dulles. Now the tough part is narrowing down where we want to visit. Thanks again!

Chris, have you decided who will fly with award tickets and who with paid tickets ? I'm guessing the 10-year-old will be one of the paid tickets since child (<11 years) ticket is a little less than adult but is the same number of award miles. If you can't get everybody on the same flight, you will have to make sure you comply with special rules for minors traveling without parents -- even if there's ONE parent you still need written (and possibly notarized) authorization from the other parent to take them out of the country. Same for grandparent -- needs written authorization from BOTH parents.

Somebody (BestFares ? SmartTRAVEL ?) suggested that fall/winter international fares would go on sale in July, but that wouldn't necessarily include next spring travel. And no guarantees.

So how much of a gambler are you ? How would you feel about sending your kids (or 2 kids and Grandma) on another flight ? When you book the award travel it's with named travelers so changes later might require additional change fees.

One thing I notice as I research FF tickets is that the fees vary enormously by which airport you fly into. I am currently trying to use a huge stash of Alaska Airlines tickets to plan a trip to just about anywhere, based on flight availability. Using the Alaska search engine, if I want to fly into Heathrow, there is a charge of well over $300 per ticket. For you, that would be $1500. There are very limited fees to fly into Amsterdam or Paris. Just food for thought.

Taxes flying into LHR on miles is reasonable - $41.00 per person on way. But flying out of London on miles is really high, over $300 pp one way. So your plan of potentially flying into London and out of Rome is good. Last trip we fly to/from Italy through Frankfurt and taxes were only around $100 pp round trip.

Here's my latest update: based on an earlier discussion string in the general Europe forum, we've decided London to Rome (with numerous stops in between) in 14 days was too ambitious. So as tough as it was, we've decided to cut out London. We're going to try Paris to Rome with some stops in Germany. So today when I was looking at availability on the United site, I found 3 saver award seats on a direct flight from Dulles to Paris. I went ahead and booked the one way tickets even though I can't get the return from Rome yet. And the nice thing is it only cost me a total of $7 in taxes. It will be myself, my 16 year old, and my 13 year old flying on the award tickets. My wife, mother in law, and our 10 year old will be on flying on the paid tickets, which hopefully will be on the same flight and at a decent price! If not, we can meet in Paris. Or we'll take a lot of nice pictures to show them.
Thanks for the tip on the "other parent" authorization.