"One of the greatest things in human life is the ability to make plans. Even if they never come true - the joy of anticipation is irrevocably yours. That way one can live many more than just one life."

Maria Trapp-The Story of the Trapp Family Singers - Ch. 12 p. 4

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

- St. Augustine

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Frequent Flier Miles

Just when I thought had dates nailed down for our trip....

My plan all along has been to use our United Airlines Frequent Flier Miles to buy tickets to NYC and then fly from NYC to Ireland. Most of the great package deals to Ireland leave from NYC and, of course, I love NYC and will use any excuse to spend even one day there! 

Well, I started looking up flights yesterday and ran into one dead end after another. No flights on May 5th or 22nd. No flights leaving after work on the 5th. No flights that layover through somewhere other than Dulles which I've always found to be a disaster. No flights that arriving before midnight! NO FLIGHTS!

Everything available meant either taking even more day off work for Doug or cutting days out of our time in Ireland and/or New York. Ugh.

United's Frequent Flyer Mile program has never let me down in this way! Always I have been able to choose just the right flight at just the right time for the minimum number of miles. I don't have enough miles to upgrade to any flight choice I want and there are no flights on the day I want. It was more than a little surprising and disappointing to discover this unexpected snaffu.

Just keep tweeking...that's my motto. After a couple hours of tweeking my searches to find a flight and vacation package that worked together and we could use, I arrived upon a possible solution. If we change the days on which we travel, and if Doug can manage to take one more day than planned off work, I found a way we can fly to and from New York on frequent flyer miles without losing any days from our Ireland trip. The change of days might actually make travel to Ireland cheaper because we will be traveling from New York to Ireland midweek.

Because the options turned out to be much more limited with our flier miles than expected and only 5 tickets were available for the option that would work for us, we now had to decide whether to take irrevocable step of actually BUYING the airline tickets. And so....

We are officially going to Ireland (via New York!) May 8th through May 24th, 2011!!!

Now to adjust our itinerary...  

2 comments:

  1. It'll be so fun to "do lunch" as we pass through :) I forgot to give you the date - Saturday the 7th is when we'll be in San Fran.

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