Basque tour sept 2016

If you are planning on using air miles, you'll definitely want to contact Alaska Air to see about available options. You can fly into Biarritz and out of Bilbao, but just be flexible if there isn't any availability with your air miles. If you can't get those locations, there aren't really any good alternatives, but some folks will fly into Bordeaux or even Paris and out of San Sebastian or Madrid but then you would need to use the trains. Contact Alaska to see what they can do for you.

First, go to Kayak http://www.kayak.com/, choose "Flights," choose "Multi City," and put in PDX to BIQ and BIO to PDX. See what comes up. If you are spending time elsewhere pre-or post tour, choose those cities instead (for instance, if you're seeing Barcelona after, your second segment should be BCN to PDX). This way, you will have some idea of the options.

Next, look at Alaska Air's partners, and see who might do some of this route. Since BIQ and BIO are not big hubs, you may not be able to use your miles all the way; you might have to use them to Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, etc and then take a train or separate flight for the rest of the way. (I had to do this for Sicily; I used miles from Philadelphia to Rome, then bought a separate flight from Rome to Palermo and Catania to Rome).

Next, if you can't book this itinerary with miles online, call and see what they can do. It will cost something like $30 extra to book over the phone, but it's worth it if you get the flights you want.

If you do have to book separate flights on separate tickets, you will either want a night in your arrival city before the next flight, or a LOT of time between flights. That's because if you have separate tickets and miss your second flight for any reason, you're on the hook both logistically (no airline will help you) and financially (you have to buy a new last minute ticket - which for your trans-Atlantic return could be thousands). What I did for Sicily was for arrival, I bought two tickets from Rome to Palermo - one three hours after arrival and one ten hours after arrival. I knew I'd throw one away, and just figured the cost of this flight as the cost of both together (it was actually cheaper than a last minute ticket on that route would have been). For my return, I flew in the night before and spent it in Rome, as the flight to the US left too early for a safe connection on separate tickets.

Pippa, AlaskaAir I believe is partner with American and Iberia. We are flying from San Jose, Ca to Madrid and then to Granada - all miles, one "fare" .We return from Bilbao, through Madrid, again, no additional fare.
Good luck.