The plane to the boat

[RhondaPerr]

Hi,

 

I wanted to share what happened to me while trying to get plane tickets to my cruise on the legend in July. Here I thought, silly me, that I could just use my years of points and poof! I could have the business class tickets I wanted! After our experience flying to Barcelona and back from Venice last year, this was the only way we would go this time.

 

SURPRISE! The awards were not what they were supposed to be. For example: Alitalia(I can never spell this airlines name) was offering a "special" 1 round trip and 1 companion ticket for business class, for 85,000 points and $6000. I went on their website and I could have purchased 2 round trip business class tickets and paid less, and not given up a point...I called the card you should never leave home without...and explained what I had been told...

 

Long story short after numerous calls, and some fantastic customer service people, we ended up with 2 first class tickets on Virgin Atlantic to London and London to Rome on Alitalia for 200,000 points plus the lux. tax...of $181.46...

 

So be careful when a card says no black-out dates because while there may not be black out dates, what you will be told if you need to fly prime time is that they only have a certain amount of tickets allocated to the points....and SURPRISE! the last caller got them!

 

Out of all the airlines I spoke with, Alitaila was the least cooperative...and not after reading some posts on the board, I am nervous about their solvency.

 

Be aware, and always question everything that does not make sense to you!

[joan24]

I'm a little compulsive and always book cruises and air as soon as possible. On Delta you can get upgrades and free tickets 331 days in advance. We use 50,000 miles plus about $2,000 each for Business Elite tickets to Europe. We thought that the promotion on the Platinum Amex card would be great. Two Business/First seats for the price of one. Only thing--they will only book this on the price of the completely refundable fare which could be twice what you'd pay if you booked without them.

Joan

[Globaliser]

So be careful when a card says no black-out dates because while there may not be black out dates, what you will be told if you need to fly prime time is that they only have a certain amount of tickets allocated to the points....and SURPRISE! the last caller got them!

Correct. But this is the way that frequent flyer awards have always been on virtually all airlines. The amount of space available for award tickets is always very limited.