I’m faced with a travel dilemma concerning holiday airline tickets and as I evaluate how best to handle it, I thought I would solicit your feedback, dear readers.
We want to spend Christmas in Germany this year and arrive the weekend before Christmas. My wife’s family is having a big Christmas party the weekend before and as many of her family is aging, it’s important that we are there.
My objective, as with every transatlantic trip, is to use points to pay for the ticket, preferably in premium cabin, and even more preferably on the outbound overnight flight to Europe.
But have you checked Christmas fares from the USA to Europe lately? They are through the roof! Last year, I had no trouble getting SAS business class tickets on Christmas Eve to Europe (though from Chicago instead of Los Angeles), returning on New Year’s. This year SAS has nothing and we need to fly earlier anyway…at the same time many others are also trying to go.
Economy class tickets are pushing $2,000 each and I don’t see anything close to saver space on the usual suspects (I’m monitoring space using Atmos, AAdvantage, Aeroplan, Avios, Flying Blue, and MileagePlus, I’m also using tools like Seats.Aero to track award space).
But at this point, there’s really nothing…and I’m not being picky. I’ll take economy class or long layovers, but I’m just not willing to pay 4-5x saver pricing or the current cash price.
Current Alternatives
I can handle this is one of three ways. First, I can just wait and hope that saver space opens. It’s too early to tell how full these flights will get, but waiting for saver space to open has generally worked in the past with a couple days of flexibility.
Second, I can buy the tickets now in case the price goes up later. If book with United, if the price goes down I can cancel and rebook, baking the residual as a future flight credit. If I wait and do nothing, I may end up spending even more as well get closer to travel because this trip is happening no matter what (God willing…).
The third option would be flying to Germany a week earlier and staying a week later…the luxury of time. But that’s not ideal because I would have to pull the kids out of school (1st and 4th grade) and I’m very busy myself. My wife’s schedule would not allow it – she’s traveling on set dates regardless of cost (and yes, I’ve also been tracking single award seats for her).
I’m less worried about the kids missing school than me trying to work from Germany, which is great for blogging but not so good for the other work that I do.
Am I missing anything? Let me know your thoughts because I’ll feel a lot better once I have something booked, but I’d feel like a sucker if I ended up paying that much for coach tickets….
That O’Hare concourse image is forever associated with Christmas travel, sin’t it?
Source: liveandletsfly.com
