Trip Booking Report: LAX-DUS-BCN with AA Miles and MAD-MUC-LAX with UA Miles

(Thanks to Josh for the idea of talking about booking my award tickets).

I’m not a huge fan or reading (or writing) trip reports, so I thought I would do a trip booking report – a report on how I used frequent flyer miles to find and book my current trip to Spain.  If you guys like this post, I will cover my recent trips to Utah (Delta SkyMiles), Seattle (BA Avios), Hamburg and Copenhagen (Virgin Atlantic economy and Air Berlin business class), Amsterdam (US Airways) or any other award trips.  For my current trip, here are my award flights:

• Los Angeles to Dusseldorf, Germany to Barcelona, Spain (LAX-DUS-BCN) on Air Berlin with American Airlines miles (30,000 miles one way)
• Madrid, Spain to Munich, Germany to Los Angeles (MAD-MUC-LAX) on Lufthansa with United Airlines miles (30,000 miles one way)

Airline Credit Cards and Frequent Flyer Miles

For my current trip, I am traveling with my parents and my younger brother.  We used 120,000 American Airlines miles and 120,000 United Airlines miles for 4 round trip economy tickets (I am such a boring travel blogger, I know).  My parents used their United Airlines miles that they acquired from their Chase United Airlines MileagePlus Explorer Credit Cards (50,000 mile sign up bonus with a 5,000 mile bonus for adding an authorized user).  They both got a Chase Sapphire Preferred Credit Card and topped up their United Airlines account balances to book the award flights.  As for the American Airlines miles, my parents have been long time users of the Citi American Airlines Credit Cards, so we redeemed miles from my mom’s account.  She recently got her first Citi American Airlines Executive Credit Card to replenish her stash of American Airlines miles.

To find the award flights, my dad was looking 330 days before the start of the trip and booked 4 American Airlines award tickets the day the award seats were released.  Then after waiting 2 weeks, he booked 4 United Airlines award tickets as soon as those seats were released.  I used the following steps to find the award seats, but the dates below are for future (imaginary) travel and for simplicity, I only searched for 1 award seat.  

Finding American Airlines Award Seats

I recommend searching for the hardest (aka longest) flight first, since those are less frequent and usually the hardest to find.  There are several ways to go from Los Angeles to Barcelona with stops in Philadelphia or Charlotte (US Airways), Chicago or New York (American Airlines) or London (British Airways), among others.  One lesser known route is Los Angles to Dusseldorf, Germany on Air Berlin.  Air Berlin has very low award taxes/fees compared to flying British Airways to London, and I do not like flying West Coast to East Coast and then continuing onto Europe.  Searching on AA.com, I made sure to search LAX to DUS, viewed the entire monthly calendar, and selected Non-Stop Only from the drop down menu on the left side.  This will force AA.com to show only available non-stop flights from LAX to DUS, which Air Berlin is the only airline that flies that route.

Clicking on one of the green dates, I can view the times of the flight.

Now that I found a non-stop flight from LAX to DUS, I searched AA.com for a flight from LAX to BCN.  The previous Air Berlin flight shows up with a short connection to Barcelona.  In the middle of the page, you can un-check certain airlines (like British Airways) from the search results.

I don’t recommend flying British Airways through London since award taxes and fees are so high ($313 in this case).

Go back to the search results page and un-check British Airways and select the Air Berlin flights.

In comparison, the Air Berlin flight only has $17 in taxes and fees.  Much much lower than British Airways.  Need I say more?

So that is how I found the Air Berlin flights from Los Angeles to Barcelona.  Up next, I will show you how I searched for United Airlines award space.

Finding United Airlines Award Seats

Searching on United.com for MAD to LAX award space results in many options and days.

However, looking for non-stop flights from Munich to Los Angeles on Lufthansa resulted in way fewer results.

Sometimes you will have to find a date that has non-stop flights, then select the box to search for only non-stop flights and then the award calendar will show only non-stop flights.  You might also have to go into advanced search settings and change the search results page to 50 results.

Now that I found award space from Munich to Los Angeles, I started searching for MAD to MUC to LAX award space.  Luckily I found a good option on Lufthansa with a short layover in Munich.

The award flight has slightly higher taxes and fees than my outbound Air Berlin flights.

So that is how I did it.  The award searching process took a few hours, but we ended up with really good flights, and (most importantly) 4 award seats on the same flights.  If you have an questions, please leave a comment below.  Good night from Spain!