flights

I use the United Airlines FF program. It doesn't seem to matter where in the lower 48 states you leave from, the number of FF miles required to fly to Europe is the same. Check the website for your FF program to see how it works. In my case, the only time I would consider making it two separate tickets would be if I wanted to stay in an East Coast city for a while before flying on to Europe.

Hi Marie,
Personally we prefer to fly SEA to AMS or SLC to CDG rather than across the US with the potential of being delayed in the US. When I'm trying to find FF tickets, I try out of Lewiston first but then if nothing comes up, I'll try out of SEA or SLC and pay for the connection LWS to SEA or SLC--although I wait for sales if there are plenty of seats available. I do start searching 11 months before we hope to depart! I also make sure if we have connection in AMS or CDG that there is plenty of time between flights...especially CDG since it's not as easy an airport to get around!

When I go to Europe every summer, I always fly from SEA to somewhere in Europe, then take a regional airline to wherever I am going there. I do not want to stop in the US where anything can go wrong. I try for FF tickets every year starting 330 days before departure (the max. # of days before departure to book FF tickets). In the last 10 years when I have tried for FF tickets, I have gotten them twice. Once on Air France and once (this year) on KLM, both times using Alaska Air miles. I call every ten days and explain my situation to the agent. If you go in the summer and have specific dates, your chances are slim and none.

I had promised my son that we would use our AA miles to get him to Germany to see his brother this year while he was still stationed there. August worked out best for his schedule (he's still in college.) Found that there were no flights available within our available miles from home. Finally found DFW-FRA round trip within our miles budget, very limited days available but we made it work. Used our remaining miles from the Citimiles program to get him from GRR to DFW and DFW back to GRR. Citimiles was a wonderful program but it's been discontinued and the miles (domestic flights only) had to be used before this October. So it's -possible- but very difficult to use miles for the whole trip. In trying to work out the details it seemed like it was almost as many miles to fly to the east coast than it was to fly to Europe itself. So if that's what you're thinking, I would perhaps pay for a ticket to the east coast and the miles to Europe from there.