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The airlines make it so difficult to use Award Miles. I have 41K with United and 51K with American (more with Delta if I want to drive to DFW!), but when I tried to book to Cozumel or even Cancun for a week in late August, it was horrible - at lowest mileage costs. United would fly me down, but not back for a month. American kept trying to route me thru Phoenix or Miami with overnight stops, etc. I'd open the search on several tabs and compare the ridiculous plans for various dates, shaking my head - and worse. Wednesday night is one of the best to shop, but the cheapest I could see for Cozumel as $670, vs $411 for Cancun plus bag drag bus & ferry - yuck.
I kept checking back to see if options improved, and my first tab blew me away! Leave Lubbock August 13 at 10am, less than an hour in DFW, arrive Cozumel mid-afternoon, then return a week later, leaving mid-afternoon, less than 3 hours in DFW, Lubbock before midnight - with reasonable aisle seats selected. That's about as good as it gets from here, love it, not even a middle of the night run to the airport like I have done so many times...!
Of course, they still charged me $80 in booking fees, there will be $65 to check my two bags of gear with some clothes each way, and they would further charge me $150 if I canceled and wanted to redeposit my miles. I'm sure there are people at each airline scheming to make it worse if the can get away with it.
This is long range planning for me, further than I like, but I figured that I had to plan early to use those miles - and I hate for them to just sit there with no hope.
I kept checking back to see if options improved, and my first tab blew me away! Leave Lubbock August 13 at 10am, less than an hour in DFW, arrive Cozumel mid-afternoon, then return a week later, leaving mid-afternoon, less than 3 hours in DFW, Lubbock before midnight - with reasonable aisle seats selected. That's about as good as it gets from here, love it, not even a middle of the night run to the airport like I have done so many times...!
Of course, they still charged me $80 in booking fees, there will be $65 to check my two bags of gear with some clothes each way, and they would further charge me $150 if I canceled and wanted to redeposit my miles. I'm sure there are people at each airline scheming to make it worse if the can get away with it.
This is long range planning for me, further than I like, but I figured that I had to plan early to use those miles - and I hate for them to just sit there with no hope.