I’ve been giving this a lot of though since we returned from USA back in October.
Some of the statistics on what we’ve done are insane compared with the last 2 decades or so when we travelled much LESS than most people. Nursing and Teaching leave you with a lot less leisure time and we had 3 dogs until just after COVID, so taking trips abroad together was almost impossible. In 2025 Anth had flown 24 Times and I’ve flown 41 times – so far – we have 8 more flights planned before 2026.
Going into 2026 this is how its looking.
- We definitely want to travel to USA to see Simon and Caroline, but we don’t have a date yet as we aren’t certain where they will be living.
- I am taking my son Sam on a trip somewhere in January or February
- I have yet to plan how we will get our remaining XP points in the Flying Blue Program. Its important that we post 28XP for Anth before the end of March and 29XP for Nick by the end of May.
We’d like to go somewhere warm for 4-5 days but we might decide that saving money and travelling somewhere interesting but cooler makes more sense. Does anyone know what Chisnau is like in March?
The downside is we will need 3 flights each way to make sure we get those points and its pretty tiing doing that. The upside is we would both have status well into 2028 allowing us to use lounges and have checked bags for free on Skyteam flights.
The first item on this list will be a big deciding factor. I’d like to be able to take one longhaul flight with Turkish Airlines each before mid July, this could potentially give us *G with Star Alliance into 2027, but I’m not sure its the best use of our resources
Our miles and points totals are looking healthy and after we have done the Flying Blue status tier upgrading we should be able to travel exclusively with reward flights for the next 2 years. We have found that we enjoy staying for one night before BHX flights in the Hilton Garden Inn at BHX. Its comfortable and overlooks one of the airport aprons ( ask for a higher room facing the airport). We should have sufficient Hilton Points to cover 2 stays.
We’ve found this year that Virgin Atlantic are great for booking both transatlantic flights and intra europe flights with either KLM or AF or Virgin Atlantic if we can bear Heathrow.
We also discovered Transatlantic crossing with Cunard on QM2 this year.
We are hoping that we can travel to or from USA with Cunard. Theres only one unicorn case where we can travel both ways on Cunard and we won’t know if that fits in with our other commitments until closer to the date of sailing. I’ll be making a video on the alternatives to flying to/from the USA sometime this year.
One advantage retirees have is they are really flexible with time and with dates of travel. This means that out much smaller budgets can really stretch further with a bit of planning. We don’t need to spend several £1000s each for a 7 hour flight in a Business cabin on a flight when we can eat and drink for 7 DAYS and sleep in a really comfortable bed arriving with zero jetlag for about 30% of the cost when everything falls into place. This only works for us because of this flexibility. There are around 20 crossings in 2026 and perhaps 10-12 might fit well for us.
I’m taking a look at other cruise lines to cross the Atlantic. MSC because Ive seen theres a way to status match with them to their Diamond Tier (which is their 2nd Tier and offers some nice benefits). The other is NCL who seem to currently offer a really good drinks package, fairly important on a 10 day+ crossing. I’d love to know if anyone has travelled with either of these (Transatlantic) and how they found the experience. Even better if you have also been on QM2 so you can give us some perspective.
The downside of these is that as they are “repositioning” cruises they only go USA-EU in the Early Spring and EU-USA in late Autumn. Its impossible to get one each way unless you plan an extended stay in USA. A non-starter with prices there.
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