TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands EIS DEPARTURE - 2 ?'s

Heading down in May and sadly need a flight home to Chicago. Figures United is not showing any award travel out of EIS now that I have enough awards to use. Anyone know if this is temporary or whats going on with that? Seems like for the whole year they are not showing award travel out of EIS. I previously have used miles for EIS to ORD.
I can purchase a ticket from Cape air or Seaborne to SJU on my own and than use miles home from SJU. Has anyone booked Cape Air or Seaborne separately like this? I have always booked under United or way in the past American. Is Seaborne still not as reliable? I will have a lot of time between connections so I am not too worried about that part of it.
Thanks all.

AA dropped EIS some time back and I'm not sure any major airlines now offer frequent flyer options with any of the smaller EIS players. Your SJU options are to fly into SJU then use inter-caribean (re-pay for luggage), cape air ($$$) and so on. Have you looked at the St Thomas/Ferry options and tried freq flyer points to to/from there? You could also mix it up, if to your advantage: SJU one way and STT, the other.

United was offering this option as I used miles from EIS to ORD in June and November. Suddenly they had stopped offering award travel to the island. STT is an option but adds 3 hours to my travel time. United goes non stop SJU to ORD and gets me home at about 6:30 at night vs AA out of STT that tops in MIA and hits ORD @ 9:45.
For me American in via STT and out on United from EIS works best.
Thanks for the IC option, I forgot about them.
Can anyone give any reasons why not to book a smaller carrier to SJU direct that fly another major airline home? I usually have just booked both flights under one carrier. Not sure if there are any risks not doing it that way.

Risk is missing a connection and it’s your problem, not theirs.
Paying for bags twice.

We have been flying into and out of EIS frequently using FF tickets on United, American and Delta. We flew in two weeks ago on United. You need to call them; booking over the internet one-way from a foreign airport seems to be a problem. United seems to have better FF options for high level award program members.

United often connects to EIS using Cape Air. Other carriers use Seaborne more, but we’ve had good luck with both of them. All planes have been very full, and a lot of luggage has been getting left behind. At least four bags didn’t make it on our Cape Air flight.

The only major that has no connecting partner is Southwest. We play it safe by overnighting in San Juan if we use them.

Same deal with Delta. In order to get tickets to EIS, you have to call.

Thanks everyone. I called a few weeks ago when they disappeared from the website. I will try again and report back!

You want to fly just two months from now. It’s very possible that there are no FF tickets left, especially if you’re looking at specific dates. We generally book further out, particularly if flying during a peak period.

I normally would too but my return date was still up in the air as I am staying a few days longer. Oh well, if I cannot use them this trip I will for another. Weird thing was I also looked way ahead out to mid summer and than early fall, no FF miles to be seen on United EIS to ORD.