My husband and I are planning on staying in Rome for 3 days prior to our cruise next July. I’m beginning to look up flight options, since I’d like to trade in some of my Alaska mileage.
Where has everyone flown into? I’m hearing multiple stores about avoiding British Air because of the taxes, and to avoid Heathrow.
Any help is appreciated!!
Also, is the Trevi Fountain area a good place as a home base?
Unfortunately you will have to connect somewhere. If trying to use Alaska miles and wanting to avoid BA fly American to Charlotte and from there take the non-stop to Rome. That's assuming Charlotte/Rome will operate next year.
There are much better areas to stay in than the Trevi fountain area - way too crowded with the tourist mobs.
You can start looking at options, but it's still way too early to book for next July. And who knows what the flight situation will be like a year from now. Better, hopefully. If you are restricting your airline choices to only One world members, then your choices will be severely limited, and would mean a connection in the US vs LHR.
Once you look at other airlines, your choice of connection airports increases a lot.
You can look at flights on Google flights, and filter for only One world flights if that's what you want. And once your dates open up you can sign up for price alerts.
Trevi fountain area wouldn't be my first (or second ) choice of location. A search on this site should give you several threads with recommended areas/hotels.
What class of travel are you looking for?
If econ or prem econ the BA fees are not killer, but higher than other airlines. If looking at biz class, then BA becomes blood sucking vampires.
If you are content with coach, then AA or Iceland Air work and possibly Aer Lingus.
I would not stay near Trevi Fountain. Crowded.
Look at the areas near Palazza Navona and the Pantheon or across the Tiber in Travestere.
In May we flew from Portland to Heathrow on Iceland Air, then to Rome (FCO) on ITA, and had a good experience all around.
We stayed near the Pantheon, which is close to Trevi, and we liked being in the middle of things. It was an easy walk to a lot of things, and a short bus ride to everything else.
Iceland Air is a partner airline and you can book flights with Alaska Miles from Seattle to Rome through the airline travel portal. The connection in Iceland is quick and efficient.
The Mileage plan is booking flights out to about mid-June right now. What you can do now to get a sense of the options is to do a search for June 15th , Seattle to Rome, and see what shows up.
Let me add, in contrary to advice above, it is not way too early to be looking. You should be looking at options now and ready to "purchase" your flights when they become available in the next month. You can cancel your tickets and get the mileage/fees deposited back into your account later if your plans change. What you can't do, is create new flights on mileage plan partners for your desired dates if you wait too long.
I can help a bit, as we use either our Alaska miles or our BA Avios to fly to Europe at least once a year.
BA and Heathrow are having their problems right now, but so are most airlines, and other European airports as well (Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam that I have seen). These issues are mainly caused by pandemic-related staffing problems, and hopefully will be resolved by next summer. But there are no guarantees.
If you want to avoid Heathrow, then your choices with Alaska miles are Icelandic, Aer Lingus, and possibly Condor (they fly direct to Frankfurt from Seattle but have not released flights past April of 2023 so far.). You may very occasionally see American Airlines flights through another U.S. airport like JKF, with a flight from Seattle to JFK on Alaska. But AA’s Saver flights to Europe rarely make it to their partners; they get snapped up right away when they are released to AA mileage program members.
Aer Lingus charges an excessive amount of miles—-60K to fly in Economy each way, so two people would need 240K miles to fly roundtrip. For those same miles, you could fly Business class on BA. Yes, you will pay their very high supplemental fees ( not all taxes) to BA, but we are willing to do that to fly in business class. It basically costs us the same as we would pay for an economy ticket, without the miles.
So Icelandic may be your best option for avoiding Heathrow at this point. Their economy tickets for next June ( as far out as one can book right now) are $35K miles plus $184 miles each way. We have never flown them so I don’t know what their seating fees and baggage policies are. I do not see any business class tickets available on Icelandic.
Award seats from most partners are released to Alaska Airlines 330 days in advance, and you will have the widest range of options if you book them right away. Thus award seats for, say, July 15 2023 should be available to Alaska miles members around August 25. You can book one way at a time to take advantage of this; we always do it that way for maximum flexibility.
A really nice feature of the award tickets is that they can be canceled without penalty if you want to make a change. At least there is no penalty or change fee for the Alaska miles tickets at this time ( perhaps they will re-instate the change fee at some point in the future). It is a simple matter to cancel online; the miles are returned almost instantly so you can use them to book something else.
Watch out for the dreaded “mixed cabin” which is a bad feature of the Alaska miles booking system. It is not a problem if you are flying Economy at all. But if you are looking at Premium Economy or Business class, you may see a little seat icon next to the price, in two shades of blue. This means that one leg of the journey is in business class and the other, generally the long-haul flight, is in economy. But you are charged the full Business class fare in miles and fees. I saw an Aer Lingus flight in the Business Class column for 280K miles. Opening the mixed cabin icon, I found that the flight from Seattle to Dublin was in Economy, and only the short flight from Dublin to Rome was in Business.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but (just to assign the blame where it belongs) the issue with British Airways is not “taxes.” The issue is the punishing FEE that BA imposes on award flights. Doesn’t come from the government, it’s not required (other airlines don’t stick it to you like that), BA just chooses to do it because they can.
This is the dirty little secret that makes Alaska miles so disappointing when people try to use them for flights to Europe: it’s hard to avoid being punished by the BA vampire.
Can you look at Vancouver (YVR) as your starting point? Might be some other options from there.
Can you look at Vancouver (YVR) as your starting point? Might be some other options from there.
Not so much when tying to use Alaska miles.
David ... lots of opportunity to use Alaska miles from YVR and sometimes more availability since you aren't competing with all the Seattle-ites.
Donna, the problem with using Alaska miles to get to Europe is the same, whether you're leaving from Seattle or Vancouver. That problem is British Airways, and the painful fees they impose.
Alaska does have other partners (notably Aer Lingus, Icelandair and Condor) but availability is pretty thin (technically they also partner with American, and American even has a nonstop from SEA to LHR, but I've never seen a single seat of availability on that and don't ever expect to...AA is infamously stingy about award flights to Europe on their own planes, they push everyone to British Airways). Using Alaska miles, all the easy availability is on British Airways, and that's what most folks get stuck with. IME, Aer Lingus is the best use of Alaska miles to get to Europe, but the pickings are slim.
IMHO United miles are way better for flights to Europe -- there are so many more easy options (including Air Canada) and none of the punishing fees that BA imposes. Alaska miles are better used for going other places (Hawaii and Mexico).
I wish Alaska flew to the continent themselves. But they just don't have any aircraft that can make the distance. I dream of the day they decide to pick up some long-legged 787s, and expand their route map to include northern Europe (and elsewhere). Chester wants to fly to Europe!
David ... yes you are correct ... the fees/taxes are exactly why I don't use our miles to Europe. And again you are correct ... trying to use the miles NOT for BA is impossible. Trying to decide whether to make our "other" airlines United just as you mentioned right now it's Delta.
Yep. I pretty much gave up on Delta when they devalued so deeply, then they hid the award chart so you were at the mercy of their pricing algorithm. The price of Delta award seats just have way too many zeroes in them for my tastes. It's too bad, I've enjoyed their nonstops from Seattle to London and Paris, they have a decent business class seat and service is pretty good. But I'm just not going to blow half a million SkyPesos (or more) each way.
United has devalued too, but nowhere near as badly as Delta has. United works very well for us getting to/from/within Europe, and while lots of people like to hate on United for plenty of valid reasons, I think they deserve a lot of credit for trying to (and often succeeding to) fix what was wrong. Their "Polaris" business class seats are perfectly nice, they have a few lounges that are actually awesome and worth killing time in, I've generally found their service to be good or very good most of the time, and they have a huge network with many partners. They get us were we need to go, and back, keeping us happy enough. Pretty good for a legacy US airline.
I still love Alaska as my hometown airline, and I'll fly with Chester domestically (including to Hawaii) or Mexico, and I'll be happy as a clam, even in coach. It's just not a great option for us to get to/from Europe. I want them to buy some 787s, then we can talk about nonstop flights from Seattle to Oslo or Edinburgh...or Papeete. 👍
We booked SEA->DFW->FCO using Alaska miles in July of '21. Travel was for April this year on combo Alaska/American Airlines, RT for two people for like 90k + $100, all in. A screaming deal, probably driven by "just-coming-out-of-the-pandemic" pricing, which is long gone these days.
The connection in DFW was tight, but we made it (biggest worry at the time was the Alaska flight from SEA->DFW, as Alaska was cancelling dozens of flights per day around that time). Return went through JFK, with a few hours layover. My initial goal was to avoid LHR as well, so when I saw connections both ways inside the US, I jumped on it.
Echo other's recommendation to not stay near Trevi Fountain area. Pantheon, Campo di Fiori or Trastevere would be my top picks.
